Food Safety Training Exposure and Safety-Based Belongingness Among Blue-Collar Workers: Evidence from a Single Turkish Flour-Manufacturing Company

The global food industry faces the dual challenge of ensuring product safety while supporting socially sustainable working environments. Although mandatory food safety training is usually examined as a compliance-oriented practice, less is known about whether training exposure is associated with employees’ sense of belonging in food production workplaces. Drawing on Signaling Theory, this cross-sectional single-company study examined the association between food safety training exposure and Safety-Based Belongingness among 608 blue-collar employees working in a Turkish flour-manufacturing company. Multiple regression and ANCOVA were used to examine the association between training exposure and a preliminary Safety-Based Belongingness composite measure, controlling for gender, age, education level, and work experience. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the proposed one-factor structure of the preliminary composite measure, and internal consistency was high. The results indicated that self-reported training exposure was positively associated with the preliminary Safety-Based Belongingness composite measure. Analyses showed that the largest difference was observed between employees reporting 0 h/no periodic training and those reporting any positive periodic training exposure. Among employees with positive periodic training exposure, additional training hours were not significantly associated with belongingness scores. Sensitivity analyses excluding food-safety-specific items showed that the association remained positive and statistically significant; however, the findings should be interpreted as preliminary associations rather than causal effects because of the cross-sectional design, single-company convenience sample, and possible measurement overlap. The study contributes to the literature by examining mandatory food safety training as a possible relational signal in a labor-intensive food manufacturing context and by offering preliminary evidence on the relevance of safety-based belongingness to the social dimension of workplace sustainability.