2 replies to this topic

[paul007]

Hi All

I am currently in a new position working as a hygiene manager in a large bakery. Its a very old traditional building, also the staff have on average all been there many years, my problem is there is no clean as you go policy in place. Its a touchy subject amongst production staff, who believe its not there job, i disagree, its everyones responsibilty. I have been given the task to bring this into practice. Easier said than done. Any help or ideas would be great.

thanks i advance


Paul

[esquef]

The company I work for also has a clean as you go policy. In fact in my 33 years of emloyment all of the company's I've worked at have had this policy. Here are some points that may be relevant to you:

- Clean as you go has to be a top down driven policy. In other words the person or people who are the most senior management (thus having the most authority) must make it clear what is expected of everyone who works at the bakery as well as what consequences will occur if the policy is routinely not followed.

- It must be made clear by management to the floor staff who has authority to take disciplinary action (which should be a clearly defined written policy) when the clean as you go policy is not followed (and hopefully you're included in being granted this authority).

- You need some sort of metrics, maybe regular cleanliness/hygiene walk-throughs using a checklist for example.

- Add some carrot to the stick; maybe after a determined number of walkthroughs with meeting or exceeding set expectations, everyone gets lunch, or a little bump in their check. This can also be effective in allowing peer pressure to take its course. (In other words, if one or two people are responsible for the benefit to not be awarded it's possible that their peers will steer them in the right direction.)

I know that what I've written may sound a bit draconian, but if you're going to be successful at creating significant culture change it takes bold measures, and they must be fairly and consistantly delivered.

[GMO]

Some good tips from the PP.

I would add that ideally you need to get a project team together which includes either a member or backing from senior management and two people from the shop floor; one who you think will be easy to convince, another who is one of the most vocal opponents, however, is someone who is obviously intellegent.

Then I would tie in your clean as you go into a general food safety, efficiency or health and safety drive (after all you can approach it from many different directions.) For example, you could look at 5S or slips trips and falls.

Explain your aim to this team, i.e. you want the factory to have improved standards of daily cleanliness (if that is the aim) or you want to remove slip hazards. Then get them to come up with solutions. Set some constraints, e.g. We can spend £200 on equipment but there is no additional funding for extra staff.

It will depend a lot on you, the management and the culture of your site as to whether something like that works but even if it doesn't, I don't think it would be a wasted exercise. You've treated everyone as adults and tried to involve them. If they then reject that, there is no real cause for them to complain if a solution gets imposed on them to some degree but then once you've opened that door saying "I want to involve you in the solutions" you might find the next problem that comes up, they might see the point and work with you.

I suggest using someone who is very vocal because there are such things in teams as "cultural architects" and "negative terrorists". I don't mean the latter in a literal way btw. What I mean by this is that these people are the vocal people in a team who are listened to by their peers. If you involve these people and get them on board, they will bring the team with them. If you exclude them, they can become disaffected and bring everyone else down. Therefore you don't always need to convince everyone, you need to convince the key influential people and the others will follow.