How are You Measuring Your Food Safety Culture Plan?
Hi
We are starting to put together our Food Safety Culture Plan in readiness for our BRC V8 Audit.
I am interested to know, what is the current position people may be in with regards to your existing food safety culture, how are you measuring this and showing evidence/demonstrating the Food Safet Culture plan is working/effective?
Any suggestions or ideas on getting started on this would be of great help.
Many Thanks
Martyn
Hello Martyn - I am curious as well about this topic considering V8 is now in effect. In my facility, the food safety culture is still developing however I received some great ideas from our food safety consultant for ways to measure, show evidence of and demonstrate food safety culture - one of which can incorporate internal GMP inspections - give each department/production line/work area a score of 100 point at the start of the inspection and as violations of GMP come up you dock 5 points - in the end each department/production line/work area will have a score and (if pictures are taken along the way) that evidence can be used as a training tool. Once training is provided the scores can be trended throughout the year to indicate improvement... create some friendly competition and can include incentives. Is the food safety culture established enough in your facility that you believe this can be effective for your operations?
Good Afternoon
Thank you for your comments. This is an interesting way of getting staff involved and taking ownership and accountability of the areas, whilst as you say creating some friendly competition.
We do a very similar style GMP audit, so this is something we can easily adapt. There appears to be a lot of research on concepts, theory and tools used to measure Food Safety Culture, but I note these appear to be targeted at larger multinational organisations and not necessarily SME.
My understanding is that the BRC will be looking as documented actions plans for the first year of audits, then looking at how the action plan is implemented year on year.
This is a very interesting topic and I would be very interested in other people views and experiences.
Kind Regards
Martyn
Good day,
Our company is going for FSSC certification, however evidence of a food safety culture is required by a customer. Currently we have:
1) A mini food safety culture survey ( distributed at general staff meetings- attached)
2) A food safety culture assessment (done annually- provided by our customer)
3) A food safety objective score card with all our food safety KPIs and the score received monthly and year to date. Some KPIs are GMP scores, PRP scores, food safety related customer complaints etc.
4) Food Safety Policy posted at critical areas e.g. training room, visitors waiting room, canteen and all notice boards.
5) Provided ID companions for all staff with our food safety policy written in a way that it can be easily understood by everyone.
6) Whsitleblower procedure in support of food safety.
I hope this helps.
S. Reid.
Hello,
Sorry, attachment was missing..
Attached Files
Thank you S. Ried.
How are you using your surveys to determine where you are at with your food safety culture?
Have you determined how you will trend growth using your survey?
My company is very results driven and would like to attach a numerical value to the survey so that we can ensure we are moving in the proper direction and I'm looking for a method of quantifying this.
From the results of the weekly internal audits I trend the staff-related hygiene non-conformances onto bar charts for each department, so the charts show which non-conformances grow most over time. The charts are sent to area managers to identify action areas and charts for all departments are shown on screens in canteens, so all staff can see how departments are performing. We also use this data in Technical for daily monitoring and in food safety training.
WIth V.8 we've now put several small locked "postboxes" around the site for two reasons, firstly for anonymous whistle-blowing and secondly for anonymous questionnaires on food safety culture within the organisation completed by all staff.
Good day,
Our company is going for FSSC certification, however evidence of a food safety culture is required by a customer. Currently we have:
1) A mini food safety culture survey ( distributed at general staff meetings- attached)
2) A food safety culture assessment (done annually- provided by our customer)
3) A food safety objective score card with all our food safety KPIs and the score received monthly and year to date. Some KPIs are GMP scores, PRP scores, food safety related customer complaints etc.
4) Food Safety Policy posted at critical areas e.g. training room, visitors waiting room, canteen and all notice boards.
5) Provided ID companions for all staff with our food safety policy written in a way that it can be easily understood by everyone.
6) Whsitleblower procedure in support of food safety.
I hope this helps.
S. Reid.
Hi Reid,
Many thanks for your response.. Do you mind sharing the below documents-
1)A food safety culture assessment (done annually- provided by our customer)
2) A food safety objective score card with all our food safety KPIs and the score received monthly and year to date. Some KPIs are GMP scores, PRP scores, food safety related customer complaints etc.
3) Food Safety Policy
Thanks in advance.
Sarah
Hi
We are starting to put together our Food Safety Culture Plan in readiness for our BRC V8 Audit.
I am interested to know, what is the current position people may be in with regards to your existing food safety culture, how are you measuring this and showing evidence/demonstrating the Food Safet Culture plan is working/effective?
Any suggestions or ideas on getting started on this would be of great help.
Many Thanks
Martyn
Hi Martyn,
Is there anything that you have come up with that you could share please?
Thanks
Please help me about Food safety quality plan as per BRC issue 8.
Hi Martyn,
● Include food safety in meetings document in meeting agenda and minutes
● Incorporate FS into existing communication tools, like a breakroom bulletin board or company newsletter
● Training logs and "on the spot" trainings
● Receipts from external trainings
● Food safety included in new employee onboarding
Since this is a subjective matter, I recommend using KPIs and employee questionnaires (these are great for establishing a baseline).
how can we develop action plan for food safety culture
This a very interesting read:
Measurement of Food Safety Culture using Survey and Maturity Profiling Tools
Toward the end of the document is a model.
To improve food safety culture you first need to establish your current level, identify gaps, develop action plans and review/refine action plans. With the assessment / measurement system presented in the article I think you have insight into how to measure your food safety culture and what criteria impacts it.
Regards,
Simon
Hi
Please find attached the GFSI position on FSC, the model they have adapted is based on the model by Jespersen et al (2016) - The link given by Simon.
https://www.mygfsi.c...ULL-VERSION.pdf
Kind Regards
Martyn
GFSI has a Technical Working Group on Food Safety Culture.
There is a A POSITION PAPER that discuses this topic:
https://www.mygfsi.c...ULL-VERSION.pdf
To get more from this paper I suggest to read articles and books about behavior based safety (food safety), Cognitive distortion in management and leadership.
For Food defence and food fraud mitigation ,it is good to have a look on Glasser's choice theory !
Risk communication is one of the most important topic in food safety culture .Risk communication is an internal part of the Risk analysis of codex (country level ) and Interactive communication is 1 out of 4 pillars of ISO 22000 .
how to communicate is so important and I can suggest reading more about TA; transactional analysis.(Eric Berne).
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, a phrase originated by Peter Drucker is an absolute reality!
This a very interesting read:
Measurement of Food Safety Culture using Survey and Maturity Profiling Tools
Toward the end of the document is a model.
To improve food safety culture you first need to establish your current level, identify gaps, develop action plans and review/refine action plans. With the assessment / measurement system presented in the article I think you have insight into how to measure your food safety culture and what criteria impacts it.
Regards,
Simon
Dear Simon,
Can you please send the correct link. As the link directs to the same page of this chat.
Rgds
This a very interesting read:
Measurement of Food Safety Culture using Survey and Maturity Profiling Tools
Toward the end of the document is a model.
To improve food safety culture you first need to establish your current level, identify gaps, develop action plans and review/refine action plans. With the assessment / measurement system presented in the article I think you have insight into how to measure your food safety culture and what criteria impacts it.
Regards,
Simon
Dear Simon,
Can you please send the correct link. As the link directs to the same page of this chat.
Rgds
Try this one https://core.ac.uk/d...df/42138283.pdf
Hello Just wondering,
How to measure the the culture once the surveys are done?