How Do You Get Employees to "Care" About Cleaning?

Hello All,
I am the Food Safety Manager for a fresh-pack potato packer in the U.S. All we do is wash, sort and pack fresh potatoes. LOTS of them. By nature, our product makes a lot of dirt and clutter. We always have a lot of dust and and a lot of packaging and packaging waste. Our plant, although clean, always seems to be cluttered and disorganized.

I know we could do a better job at keeping things neat and organized but it's tough because often our packing demand is such that it is all our employees can do to keep up with orders, much less keep things cleaned up to the level where I'd like to see it. Furthermore, I also know we have employees who just don't see the point of keeping things neat, unless we have an audit coming up. After all, it's "just potatoes".

I'm considering implementing some type of incentive award, a "Clean-Sweep Award", where I could present a small award to teams and areas of the plant that are particulary clean and neat on any given day. My hope is to create a spirit of competitiveness where employees with be motivated to maintain their work areas better in hopes of winning the award.

Has anyone ever done a program like this? If so, will you share what you've done, the type of awards (gifts?) you've given, the frequency of presenting the incentive, etc? How did you introduce the program?

If you don't do an incentive program, how do you get your workers (including supervisors) to "care" about keeping work areas neat - especially if they may not work in the same area every day.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Nancy at Masser's

in the hotel I work, we used to do monthly audits and the team who scored the highest for the month was offered lunch in one of the restaurant. It worked at the beginning, but they got bored from it. I guess we need to change the type of incentive quite often, because people get bored very easily.

Dear Nancy,

The tricky part IMEX is how to make a fair ranking / selection of "winner(s)". For example a common problem is to create a level playing field if, as is often the case, some sections are "naturally" easier to maintain clean than others. If so you may well find that one section is a continual "winner". Net result then becomes similar to previous post, ie the runners-up (very) rapidly lose enthusiasm.
I don't know any generally applicable method, maybe other people here do.

The primary, basic, incentives are all well-known of course, albeit not section selective.

Rgds / Charles.C

Hi Nancy
I work for a potato packer with several sites. I have seen them all in operation and would be hard pressed to say they were all spotless. What i would say though is that cleanliness comes from the top. Our boss is fanatical about it. And it shows, if he walks across the yard and sees some rubbish he will pick it up. Leading by example is the best way. It does help that we employ people to clean all the time. It really makes a difference to moral if people know that they are coming to work in a clean environment even if its only working with potatoes.
Supervisors must know that they have backup and not only at audit time!
We train people when we first employ them and stress the need for cleanliness. Having a tidy work area also means less hazards about the place and therefore less trips and falls.
We have a reputation within the industry for immaculate presentation of the factory. Little and often seems to be the way forward.
Good luck
Campbell.

Interesting topic! We have just implemented a "performance evaluation" and what we did is first to inform all personnel what items would be evaluated every month (including: cleaning, personnel hygiene, etc.) and at the end of the month we calculate a grade per person, and we publish the employee of the month! it is throwing great results!

Hello All,
I am the Food Safety Manager for a fresh-pack potato packer in the U.S. All we do is wash, sort and pack fresh potatoes. LOTS of them. By nature, our product makes a lot of dirt and clutter. We always have a lot of dust and and a lot of packaging and packaging waste. Our plant, although clean, always seems to be cluttered and disorganized.

I know we could do a better job at keeping things neat and organized but it's tough because often our packing demand is such that it is all our employees can do to keep up with orders, much less keep things cleaned up to the level where I'd like to see it. Furthermore, I also know we have employees who just don't see the point of keeping things neat, unless we have an audit coming up. After all, it's "just potatoes".

I'm considering implementing some type of incentive award, a "Clean-Sweep Award", where I could present a small award to teams and areas of the plant that are particulary clean and neat on any given day. My hope is to create a spirit of competitiveness where employees with be motivated to maintain their work areas better in hopes of winning the award.

Has anyone ever done a program like this? If so, will you share what you've done, the type of awards (gifts?) you've given, the frequency of presenting the incentive, etc? How did you introduce the program?

If you don't do an incentive program, how do you get your workers (including supervisors) to "care" about keeping work areas neat - especially if they may not work in the same area every day.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Nancy at Masser's

Why is the mind motivated to do certain things? What drives you to do an activity or to accomplish something?

Why is the mind motivated to do certain things? What drives you to do an activity or to accomplish something?

Now that's a question.

It usually starts from within, but top management can assist by lighting the touch-paper.

Beyond Manipulating and Motivating to Leading and Inspiring

Regards,
Simon

Normally someone does something because "they want to"... why we want to certain things? because it makes us feel good, because we feel important by doing it. That is the challenge, to figure out what makes people feel important, probably fair recognition is a good start

The other thing you can try is telling them that if they do not want to do the cleaning they can report to the HR/Managers office where they will spend time learning how to update their CVs (resumes) instead...

The other thing you can try is telling them that if they do not want to do the cleaning they can report to the HR/Managers office where they will spend time learning how to update their CVs (resumes) instead...

Unfortunately if positive reinforcement isn't working, the imlementation and use of a progressive disciplinary policy is possibly the only alternative (1) verbal warning, 2) written warning without penalty, 3) written warning with 1 day off without pay, 4) written warning with 3 days off without pay, 5) dismissal; that's fairly standard policy in the U.S.). This obviously works better with respect to employee morale when combined with an employee recognition program which rewards the "do gooders."

Hi,

I did had the same kind of issues in a plant that at the time produced meat products and this was very serious!
So i needed to create the need on the workers to do the sanitizing correctly, so this was what i did:

1 - I started appointing 1 meeting with the workers (per shift) every week.
2 - I started walking in the plant with a camera
3 - when i saw something wrong (anything) i would take a picture.
4 - On the meeting i present the picture and asked each one to analyze them and to give their oppinion to everyone.
5 - Usually the started with "Oh my God! what is that!?"

In conclusion, i wouldn't put any names, any photos with faces, and i would leave the trainning to them selfs each week.
I can assure that improvments were noticed by the top management.

All of the above makes sense if all of the workers do have a good GMP trainning.

I hope that my experience helps you.

Paulo