S6 Who’s Going to Fill Your Shoes?  Capacity Building for the Future

Sunday, July 26, 2015: 8:30 AM-12:00 PM
B115 - B116 (Oregon Convention Center)
Primary Contact: Wendy White
Organizers: Wendy White , Lone Jespersen and Sara Mortimore
Convenors: Wendy White , Lone Jespersen and Sara Mortimore
As food safety professionals, we often spend our days overseeing food safety, guarding brand trust, and ensuring there’s no interruption to product supply.  This session forces audiences to go beyond assuring product supply and addresses the questions, “Is enough being done towards capacity building for the future?  Are we adequately laying the groundwork to protect our legacy for those that come after us?  Am I ever going to be able to retire in peace!?”

It’s estimated that each day, 10,000 Americans (largely consisting of Baby Boomers) retire; many other countries are experiencing a similar phenomenon.  This vacuum is creating a global skills gap, and the food safety industry isn’t immune.  We must proactively address this future talent shortage by implementing education and training strategies to ensure there is a sustainable succession of high quality practitioners. 

This session will directly address many facets of this problem:

  • Understanding the global skills gap in our industry through a case study involving auditor competency.

  • Addressing the need for curriculum changes to ensure that this skills gap is addressed, and adequately equipping future professionals. 

  • The decline in incoming Food Science majors. How to recruit/train the next generation, directly from a Millenial’s perspective.

  • Ensure that current quality professionals receive the proper continuing development and education needed to combat emerging issues and future challenges.

  • Capacity building for the future: a discussion of the link between competency, capacity, and protecting the health of our consumers.

This session will hear from food safety experts who have already begun to tackle these tough questions.  They will present mitigation strategies for recruitment/engagement of present and future professionals and initiatives being developed to fill our global skills gap.  Attendees will garner tips, share best practices for several innovative solutions, and discover collaboration opportunities that they can bring back to their own organizations.

Presentations

10:00 AM
Break
10:30 AM
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