66 replies to this topic

[Imran Aslam]

Good night Mr Simon

At moment I' not working (unfortunately!) but I think that a food safety culture is more than wear proper clothes or washing hands, it's all behavior and mind that must be educated from top (management) to ground floor (simple worker in production or farm).

Some time ago, I've found these interesting books, which I recommend to have some reading, they are very interesting.

Teresa Gonçalves

Good stuff. Thanks for sharing these books.

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[bcarballo]

I started to work five months ago in a meat products company. When I arrived all the registers, check lists and many staff was invented for the audits.

 

But not only that, the RRHH politics that are managed by the manager... established that the cheeper the better... so I found people who had no preparación in food safety or proper behavior in food industry. The quality department was in charge of a person who has no preparation for a quality department and everything was working by luck.

 

So I need to point -2 because of the lack of interest in food safety caused for the RRHH decisions.

[nosyajnerak14]

A strong commitment from the top management to the Quality / Food Safety plan implementation is the first and foremost requirement needed for a Quality / Food Safety plan to be effective. Budget wise a sound Quality /food safety plan implementation will increase your operation cost but at the same time it will improve your system by reducing your wastage/rejects and increasing your product competitiveness.

[Michelle Grace Astorga]

Hi Simon,

 

In our company, we are working on it on a slow but steady pace. It is a culture, thus, we need to ensure that all our employees fully understood and practice food safety culture. It is not learned and perfected overnight but must first be fully understood and accepted by everyone.

[Heidi_SQF]

With our movement from our previous standard to SQF (GFSI based), it has provided us an opportunity and a platform to stress the importance of food safety in all facets of our business.  I still think we have a long way to go, but our personnel are better informed, better trained and ask better questions concerning the food safety of our parts. 

 

Our Management Team has been instrumental in helping me bring about a new "culture" of food safety in our workplace.  They are also interested in learning as much as they can about the day-to-day food safety requirements of our employees.  This is very encouraging for us moving forward. 

 

Although we are probably around a +0.5 - +1.0 right now, I do think we are headed in the right direction.

[nberzins]

Good night Mr Simon

 

At moment I' not working (unfortunately!)  but I think that a food safety culture is more than wear proper clothes or washing hands, it's all behavior and mind that must be educated from top (management)  to ground floor (simple worker in production or farm).

 

Some time ago, I've found these interesting books, which I recommend to have some reading, they are very interesting.

 

Teresa Gonçalves

 As a new company, we strive everyday to help a team learn and abide by good food safety techniques. These will really help promote a better understanding  for the team.

 A huge thank you

[evied1062]

We have just started out on our Food Safety System, generally the staff understand that we need to produce a safe product, however we produce Salt so there is very little chance of bacterial contamination and as it has no best before date, I think staff become a little complacent. In the process of setting up SOP's but hopefully the staff will get that we still need to follow rules to keep the product safe

[Quality Ben]

That's something I just can't get my head around with new employees. New permanent ones should be looking to make an impression and agency ones should be doing everything they can to encourage us to keep them as long as is possible but instead its the new ones that get out of their vans and gob on the floor or avoid wearing hairnets etc. At least the longer-term employees can put their negative traits down to complacency!

 

Problem is without the powers from above disciplining- or even leading by example half the time- members of staff then QA don't have a chance. I myself run a two-man department (the number two is currently learning the job and we're still moulding him to think like a technical person) and we can't spend all day chasing people to wear hairnets and wash their hands.

 

If anyone knows a way to present a case for a change of culture or a way of suggesting it to the top then please help!!

Best advice I can give is CONQ - you need to monitise the cost of non conformance Andy.

Boil the Food Safety stuff down to core essence and put a cost on things. You need to get it coming from the top down.

Once you get some buy in then you just keep the momentum going....show that QA / Food Safety can save money. One step back / two step forward thinking.

 

Another useful tactic.....give them a scare! (use this tactic cautiously and wisely...you may only get one shot....)   

[Caglar]

According to current results majority of companies have neutral or positive culture which is good.

[Jorge Manzanero]

Some of our employees only speak English, some only Spanish. Go figure. Thats why we have to have double trainings.

[DLH]

It is a work in progress.  we have a wide range of staff with various years of service and we are finding it challenge getting the older staff to buy into the food safety culture and as others have indicated if all of the management team is not supporting the program then their staff will also shirk the system. 

[Timwoodbag]

Some of our employees only speak English, some only Spanish. Go figure. Thats why we have to have double trainings.

My employees only speak Cape Verdian Creole, I can't even Google Translate!

[Yettos]

Continuous improvement is the name of the game, I was told stories how factory functioned few years back when it was 1/10th of a size of current operation, best case scenario was "-2", now it is more towards "1", maybe "1.5" however I am still not happy with production disregarding hygiene windows. 

[Sanitation]

Good stuff. Thanks for sharing these books.

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Very true Imran!!!  My current company's food safety and sanitation culture is sickening.  I am trying to curb this, but the other supervisors are just as bad as the operators. 

[bcarballo]

I'd say -3. I just started last year in my job and when I realize about the situation, come to my mind a very critic war. Having food safety culture was and is beeing so difficult. In quality staff we are improving all we can. But as many people say it is a very hard job to pass and convince production staff. But not only that, the owner saw the quality staff as compulsary and necessary workers, with a very easy job.

 

Many companys look only for benefit, specially the ones wich come from a family owners. The traditional companys that grew up and did not have experience in quality control. So the first step in these cases is to change the mind of the owner and open their eyes to see with your ayes and hesatations.

 

If the owner is part of this change you have the 50% in your favour. After this change I think you can start with workers as the ones that are in -2.

[zakaria773]

Good night Mr Simon

 

At moment I' not working (unfortunately!)  but I think that a food safety culture is more than wear proper clothes or washing hands, it's all behavior and mind that must be educated from top (management)  to ground floor (simple worker in production or farm).

 

Some time ago, I've found these interesting books, which I recommend to have some reading, they are very interesting.

 

Teresa Gonçalves

Agreed.. thanks for books. Teresa Gonçalves

[R Noteboom]

Very proud of the entire team, we recently updated from ISO22000 to FSSC22000 and had a complete makeover of the quality system (including translation from dutch to english) where I was fortunate to have all personel doing their best to help me with the transition of their specific expertice. The completion of our quality system and the FSSC22000 certification was therefor a team-effort (and completed with champagne and celibration). The result is a strong participation of the production team in maintaining our standards. 

[Plastic Ducky]

I would have to say a -1 and like many others on this topic, it comes from a lack of dedication from the top. Even people at the top of my facility refer to the SQF system as being my responsibility. While that is true to some degree, it should ideally be perceived as a culture rather than just something I maintain. Production supervisors have a larger voice than I do and their numbers (on production) are reported weekly. It's harder to get peoples attention when you are on your soap box with less concrete examples to back up your argument. Then again, we are a packaging company and have no Safety Coordinator, have never done a fire drill, and hire people straight out of prison, so a -1 is pretty good considering 30% of production workers have an equivalent of 3rd grade literacy. I'm not being elitist , it is simply the labor pool I must work with and educate as best I can.

[oouzo]

Oh, nice not too bad. I'll give 0.

[adelk2202]

I gave our operation a +1 for food safety culture. Now if only I could get my quality culture up to the same standard. The quality culture is probably a -2. 

[milagr]

Good night Mr Simon

 

At moment I' not working (unfortunately!)  but I think that a food safety culture is more than wear proper clothes or washing hands, it's all behavior and mind that must be educated from top (management)  to ground floor (simple worker in production or farm).

 

Some time ago, I've found these interesting books, which I recommend to have some reading, they are very interesting.

 

Teresa Gonçalves

 

 

***admin removed uploaded books as they are subject to copyright and not free to share***

Dear Ms. Teresa,

Request if you can please write the names of the books, as I missed this post.

Thank you

[StoneMill]

When I first started working under the role of Quality Assurance a year ago I would rate the food safety culture in our facility as non existent. 6 months after being assigned the title of QA I was actually permitted to begin practical work in my position (short story- I was still milling and delivering flour for the first 6 months. Owner/management wouldn't allow desk time or time for me to begin to study and tackle the role. I took work home off clock but it was hard to relate).

 

In the past 6 months, after pushing my way to get desk time the owner/management and employees have become more aware of food safety through policies, training and some "friendly" audits by potential customers. Still food safety is viewed as "what is the least we have to do to get by". There is no solid buy in nor support for the QA role.

[SausageGuy]

Dear Ms. Teresa,

Request if you can please write the names of the books, as I missed this post.

Thank you

 

So I'm not sure what books were originally posted, but definitely check out Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-Based Food Safety Management System and Food Safety = Behavior: 30 Proven Techniques to Enhance Employee Compliance by Frank Yiannas. There might be a free PDF version floating around somewhere.

[dormant account]

Have to admit ours could be improved considerably. There has been an ongoing battle between operational and quality staff for a long time now due to quality staff 'being awkward' and operational staff 'not faffing about getting milk into cold storage when there's sweeping up to do'. This comes from managers and supervisors unfortunately as well as those working beneath them. How do you go about breeding a positive food safety culture without sacking the lot and starting again?!

Hi Andy. My question exactly. Awkward vs Faffing. I am the awkward manager. I woke up this morning with the idea - today I will be positive, supportive, cheerful and appreciative. Will it help the faffers? Lets see. I will get back to you tomorrow.

[Vinodhini]

We imparted GMP training for shop floor workers with PPT showing their violations during handling and this helped well to some extent. Now employees understand the consequences, if something goes wrong with their practices. Working tirelessly with comfortable plans to improve food safety culture in our organization.