Ask an auditor what they want to see from a training program, and the answer is getting simpler: proof your people can perform.
A completed or attended course has long been the way to show someone was prepared. But SQF Edition 10, with audits beginning January 2, 2027, is catching up with BRCGS on competency, and the question is moving from "did they take the training?" to "can they actually do the job?"
The auditor now needs to know: Can this operator run the changeover correctly? Can the new hire work without someone watching over their shoulder? You'll need to show it, with evidence tied to a named worker.
Many plants are in the same spot. A recent global training survey found that more than half of sites still manage training with paper or spreadsheets, and a quarter have no defined competency-based audit framework.
For many plants, building skills on the floor and gathering records for the auditor have been two separate jobs. That isn't a failing. Paper and spreadsheets were often the only practical option, and they've carried plenty of great teams through plenty of audits. But as we wrote this summer, the fix isn't a better spreadsheet. It's not needing one.
There's a better way to think about it. When you build training that makes people capable, and keep the right record of it as it happens, the same effort answers the auditor. You aren't preparing for the audit. You're showing the work you were already doing.
That's the thinking behind the new training platform we're building for food manufacturing: a system built for what your auditors want to see. It starts from a simple idea: finished isn't capable, and knowing it isn't doing it. So every learning topic follows one competency journey, from understanding the material to doing the job right on the floor.
The journey has four steps:
Take allergen control. A team member takes an Allergen Awareness course and learns your Line Changeover SOP. A Knowledge Check confirms they retained it, and Engagements coach them through it on the line. Then comes the step that answers the auditor's real question: a Changeover Observation.
In a Behavior Check, a Validator watches the work, captures photo or video evidence, and signs off with the learner. Once it's submitted, the record locks. So when the auditor asks whether your team can perform the changeover, you have more than an attendance record to show. You have an observation with a name, a date, photo or video evidence, and a sign-off that can't be rewritten later.
That also speaks to what Edition 10 asks about food safety culture: that it shows up in daily behavior, not just in a policy binder. Observed, signed-off behavior on the floor is the kind of proof that tells that story.
A system is only as good as the records people can realistically keep in it, and plant floors aren't desks. That's why we built the platform for the plant floor, not for a quiet half hour at a computer. When the work happens on the line, the proof should be captured there too.
It's also why we made it simple from the first tap. Records get entered when the process is easy, and they get skipped when it isn't. A Validator should be able to observe, capture, and sign off without a manual in hand, and a learner should be able to pick it up without training on the training.
And it's why everything lives in one record, start to finish. From the first course to the final sign-off, each person has one record, not a course history in one place, observations in another, and a spreadsheet holding the rest. When the auditor asks for proof, there's one place to go, and the answer is already there.
We're unveiling the platform on November 2, 2026, and it launches February 1, 2027. If you'd like to see it before anyone else, get launch updates or book a preview today.
Edition 10 audits start sooner than that, so if you want to know where your program stands right now, take the free SQF 10 Readiness Assessment. It takes a few minutes.
It's time to shift from completed to capable.