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Every GFSI-recognized scheme expects employees to be trained and competent for the tasks that affect food safety, and expects you to be able to prove it on request. The record an auditor wants is not a sign-in sheet. It is evidence that a specific person was trained on a specific procedure, that someone confirmed they could actually do it, and that the record gets refreshed when the procedure – or the person’s grasp of it – changes.
Attendance Is Not Competency
A sign-in sheet proves someone was in the room. It does not prove they understood what was covered, or that they can perform the task correctly on the line. Scheme auditors increasingly draw that line explicitly, and a program that only keeps attendance logs is exposed the first time an auditor asks "how do you know this person can actually do this?" Competency means some form of verification – a quiz, a supervised demonstration, an observed check – that goes beyond a signature.
What a Training Record Has to Show
- Who was trained. A named employee, not a department or a shift.
- On what, specifically. The exact procedure or SOP, tied to the version that was in effect at the time – not a generic "food safety training" entry.
- Who trained them, and that the trainer was qualified to. A trainer who does not understand the procedure cannot verify that someone else does.
- How competency was confirmed. What the trainer or supervisor actually did to check understanding, beyond a signature on an attendance sheet.
- When it happened, and when it expires or triggers a refresh. A date with no retraining logic attached is a one-time event, not a program.
Retraining Triggers
A training record that never gets revisited ages out quietly. The programs that hold up define, in writing, what forces a retrain:
- The underlying SOP or procedure changes.
- New equipment or a new process is introduced.
- A deviation, non-conformance, or audit finding traces back to a gap in understanding, not just a one-off mistake.
- A fixed refresher interval the program itself sets.
- An employee returns after an extended absence from the role.
Where Training Programs Usually Fail
The training itself is rarely the hard part. The record-keeping around it is where these fall apart:
- Records exist but are not tied to a specific procedure or its version, so there is no way to tell whether someone was trained on the current method or an old one.
- The person signing off as trainer was never confirmed competent themselves.
- Nothing in the program says what triggers a retrain, so a procedure changes and nobody’s record catches up to it.
- Records are scattered across binders, spreadsheets, and whoever ran that particular session, so pulling a complete history for one employee during an audit becomes a search.
How HACCP Builder Helps
HACCP Builder’s sub plan library includes a training and competency sub plan alongside the other programs that sit around a HACCP plan. You can also build a Training check list or log like any other – add, edit, and customize your own questions so it captures what your program actually requires, not a generic template. Once a training record is submitted, it follows the same rule as any other operational record: the employee who submitted it can correct their own entry for 24 hours, then it becomes permanent – exactly the kind of record history an auditor can trust was not cleaned up after the fact. See the full breakdown on the Document Control & Audit Trail page, and where the programs around a HACCP plan fit together on the GFSI page.
An Honest Note on Scope
Scope note: what counts as sufficient competency verification, and how often retraining has to happen, differs by scheme, by role, and by how directly a task affects food safety. A line employee monitoring a CCP and an office-based scheduler are not held to the same standard. Confirm what your specific scheme or customer expects rather than assuming a generic interval covers every role. This post is general information, not a compliance opinion for your facility.
Contact HACCP Builder to see how a training and competency record fits your own facility.
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