14 replies to this topic

[GMO]

Hey all, we've assessed our baseline then done some handwash training and some training programmes in the factory with the operations team (as one of the findings from our baseline is no-one talks about food safety apart from Technical.) 

 

I've got a few ideas to improve going on but it's not easy stuff this.  Anyone got any bright ideas?  We're going to sit down as a cross functional team soon and brainstorm too but I'd love to go in with a few corkers in the bag as ideas.

[Dr.Khan]

HI GMO

 

Good start but the list of improvement is very long. Depending on the type of products you make you could add some of the following in your improvement list

 

1. Allergen management 

2. Labeling issues and review

3. Customer complaints - how to learn from them

4. Quality System - Not a cost but A tool for business performance improvement

 

Kind regards

Dr Humaid Khan

MD Halal International Services

Australia

[Simon]

Hi GMO, nice to hear from you, hope you are well.

 

For me communication (in every direction) is the key and this can take many forms, but it needs to be planned, formalised and systematic in some ways.  I totally endorse monthly briefings for the entire business.  Stop work once a month for 30 minutes or so and communicate for example.

- Sales actual v budget
- Profit actual v budget
- New customers
- Technical updates
- Department specific targets such as production output budget v actual and efficiencies
- Accidents and Incidents
- Cost of quality
- Customer complaints
- Internal non-conformance
- Food Safety Incidents and Issues
- Audit findings
- Corrective / Preventive action taken/required on any non-conformance
- Projects / improvements

- Any other business

Has to be done every monthly and by all without fail.

This in itself will help to bring about an improvement in food safety culture.
Good topic, looking forward to hearing others ideas.

Regards,
Simon

[zanorias]

Hi GMO,

 

What do the results of internal/external audits, customer complaints, QA observations etc tell you about the current food safety culture? I would use these as a basis for improvements and provide some direction. I.e. if hand swabs kept failing micro or QAs repeatedly noticed operatives not washing hands properly then the need for improved hand washing is evident. I know you've covered this area but just an example of identification. Were there any other findings from your baseline?

 

Moving slightly away from bringing problem areas up to standard, I'm curious if anyone works on incentives or rewards to staff? I.e. if standards or the food safety culture exceeds expectation could staff receive a benefit that would encourage the standard to be maintained? For example, my company recently passed it's first unannounced BRC audit with a good result and so the directors provided vouchers to all staff. I'm interested in the effect this may have long term, hopefully beneficial, or perhaps lead to questions arising after the next audit if it doesn't go so well; "why didn't we get vouchers this time?" "was it because so & so caused the non-comp?" - and then blame sets in. Or maybe I'm just being gloomy

[pHruit]

Hi GMO, nice to hear from you, hope you are well.

 

For me communication (in every direction) is the key and this can take many forms, but it needs to be planned, formalised and systematic in some ways.  I totally endorse monthly briefings for the entire business.  Stop work once a month for 30 minutes or so and communicate for example.

 

 

This is pretty much what we've arrived at - we already have the monthly briefing in place for sales figures, financial performance, strategy updates etc so I'm just going to piggyback on that and deliver similar headline points on food safety and quality.

We also discovered that the online training platform that we use for H&S stuff has a couple of modules that are roughly equivalent to the content of the level 2 Food Hygiene cert, and we're already paying the subscription fees so I'm proposing to the other heads of department (other than teams who already have this training) that their staff should do these too, as it's a ready-made brief introduction to some useful concepts for the staff who are primarily office-based.

And if nothing else, it should mean that I have to witness slightly fewer disturbing practices in the staff kitchen

 

Moving slightly away from bringing problem areas up to standard, I'm curious if anyone works on incentives or rewards to staff? I.e. if standards or the food safety culture exceeds expectation could staff receive a benefit that would encourage the standard to be maintained? For example, my company recently passed it's first unannounced BRC audit with a good result and so the directors provided vouchers to all staff. I'm interested in the effect this may have long term, hopefully beneficial, or perhaps lead to questions arising after the next audit if it doesn't go so well; "why didn't we get vouchers this time?" "was it because so & so caused the non-comp?" - and then blame sets in. Or maybe I'm just being gloomy

The bonus structure for some of our departments is partly linked to certification and audit performance, but I'm honestly not sure how much of a driver it really is for them - as they're already directly involved in it, it's more a matter of personal achievement I think, which hopefully means that they are very much invested in genuinely achieving safe food production.

I'm not sure how this could be rolled out across other departments as they have their own KPIs already, and I don't know how fair it would feel for my own staff if their performance at BRC affected the bonuses for e.g. the order processing team? As you say, great if the result is an AA and everyone is happy, but I think it could very quickly create unwanted divisions if the result is a C...

 

I'm a delusional optimist, so I'm working on the basis that people will naturally want to do things better when they have an understanding of why we do things in the way that we do

[GMO]

Thanks everyone, we're pretty much doing all of the above already but we still come across those numpty moments. 

 

So for me, FS culture is about getting people to do the right thing even if nobody is watching.  I think communication plays a part but I think we're fooling ourselves if we really think giving a monthly briefing is going to make that happen.  I really want to think BIG!

[zanorias]

Thanks everyone, we're pretty much doing all of the above already but we still come across those numpty moments. 

 

 

Unfortunately I think a certain amount of "numpty moments" is inevitable when working with people

 

 

So for me, FS culture is about getting people to do the right thing even if nobody is watching.  I think communication plays a part but I think we're fooling ourselves if we really think giving a monthly briefing is going to make that happen.  I really want to think BIG!

 

A monthly briefing alone isn't going to magically create a good food safety culture, no, but I think it's a good place to start. Once you have that communication between departments it doesn't necessarily need to remain a technical-only thing. Then you can have collaboration across the company and hopefully see results across the company.

[pHruit]

I think that you both underestimate just how effective it can be to gather lots of less-than-willing people in a room, and then have management talk at them about bacteria, and pie charts of market share, and exciting concepts such as EBITDA...

 

For me it's just a starting point to get a dialogue going and slowly encourage people to start thinking about things. I'd also very much like to do some smaller and more interactive training and discussion sessions with other departments, but that will require more of their time and is thus going to be more challenging to convince their department heads to play along, at least until they've been through the same training process both as guinea pigs and as part of their own conversion to being willing and active participants in the improved food-safety culture

[SQFconsultant]

Must start from the head down.

 

I remember being at a company that made pies.  Acting as an Consultant having just completed an operational and capital walking tour of the facility I was sitting at a conference table explaining operational issues that I observed, everybody around the table is nodding up and down and basically telling me that it's next to impossible to institute a "food safety culture" in their kind of operation to which I said, well that's funny you should say that because I was in a similar operation that makes cakes about a month ago and you should see how their food safety mindset rolled out in the workplace. I went to say that here there really are no capital improvement issues (structure, wall, flooring, equipment condition, etc.) but on the operational side it's a complete breakdown and failure and no wonder they had two recalls in the past year for things that never should have happened.

 

Then the owner and president of the company come in and sit down -- interesting how demeanor's changed with all sitting at the table.

 

Now, it got serious.

 

Both the owner and president made the statement that they thought the facility was in pretty good shape, to which I agreed - in fact, I said that if the only thing an SQF audit focused on was the physical plant they would get a 100, but on the operational side they would fail so badly they would have to first crawl out of the well to gasp for some air and then have to face their customers and tell them why they have such terrible operations.

 

Both, sat there seemingly stunned.

 

The owner who is rarely there said I don't understand, but the president said, well we did pay him to tell us what's wrong and then map out a way to fix it.

 

The owner, still in the dream believing that everything was OK was immediately tasked with entering the production area with a list of things to check, he was told to follow all the GMP's, hairnet, washing hands, sanitizing, labcoat, etc.

 

He went with an escort and they began a series of checking on their employees, stopping to see how a metal detector check is done, how a refrigerated truck is handled inbound and outbound, what records are checked, what did the employees know about HACCP, what were the CCP's, what was the importance of not bringing personel items into production, etc. etc.

 

Now, we got to watch them thru one way windows and on the monitors --- to say the least, it was a gigantic eye opener for the owner and the president.

 

That day we mapped out a plan and it wasn't technical that got the job of overseeing everything - it came from the head of the company, owner and president - within 6 months their "food safety culture" was not something they all just said would be a good idea, it became reality.

 

Training became conprehensive and everyone was required to go thru all training including owners, president, vice president, marketing, production, sanitiation, maintenance, shipping - everybody.

 

And at their first SQF audit they garnered a 95.

 

It has to come from the top - it has too!

[GMO]

 

It has to come from the top - it has too!

 

Thank you, you've really got me thinking.  Where I am now has good support from the man at the top but he gives more vocal support to other areas.  I'm working on that with him and he's changing his behaviours but we're currently looking at a new audit process.  I'm wondering how we could get the big cheeses doing some auditing or at least involved in some way. 

[Simon]

Improvement drives including culture change often starts with a brass band playing, slogans and lots of energy that quickly dissipates and is then counterproductive and makes it more difficult the next time.  I can understand you wanting to go large, but it really is a myriad of small things that make the positive culture change and it is a slow process and never ending. Top management have to show interest, set the tone and targets, provide the resources etc. and then it is good management and supervision throughout the business. Objectives, training, communication, PDCA...weed out those who are rowing the other way and reward those rowing in the right direction.  A weekly walkabout by senior management is a good idea, but I wouldn’t have them auditing IMO.

[Zeeshan]

Hi GMO.
 

I presume you've missed the post "https://www.ifsqn.co...n-organization/" , where one of the member 've posted an excellent survey form which, IMO, is the best starting point to assess where our organization is standing right now and in which direction we should move then.

 

Regards.

Muhammad Zeeshan Zaki.

[GMO]

Hi GMO.
 

I presume you've missed the post "https://www.ifsqn.co...n-organization/" , where one of the member 've posted an excellent survey form which, IMO, is the best starting point to assess where our organization is standing right now and in which direction we should move then.

 

Regards.

Muhammad Zeeshan Zaki.

 

Thanks but we're a bit further on than this.

[fepuhe]

a very informative thread, because we are a small company consisting of only 60 people. What we do is more on engagement people, team building implementation, gathering events in which we enter the basic values, self-indicators, the value of food safety, the promise of food loyalty.
We also carry out GMP scanning twice a week (very routine), and we send our QA to carry out personnel approach. We are still in the stage of always developing, not reducing our defenses against food security risks.

I also got a sharing from many friends who work in factories with a number of employees above 400 - 3000 people.

They carry out a practice called the Thank you Card. Cumulative per month, can be exchanged for door prizes in HR. This card is used when in inter-departmental problem solving, the personnel feel helped. Thus building a Horenso system - and the culture problem solving system in it.

Another company is building a whistle blowing system with a large screen displayed in the management office. There will appear people who report problems, how to solve them. Previously, the information will be monitored by 1 admin for verification. The highest number of reports and problem resolutions will receive an award per month.

[GMO]

Improvement drives including culture change often starts with a brass band playing, slogans and lots of energy that quickly dissipates and is then counterproductive and makes it more difficult the next time.  I can understand you wanting to go large, but it really is a myriad of small things that make the positive culture change and it is a slow process and never ending. Top management have to show interest, set the tone and targets, provide the resources etc. and then it is good management and supervision throughout the business. Objectives, training, communication, PDCA...weed out those who are rowing the other way and reward those rowing in the right direction.  A weekly walkabout by senior management is a good idea, but I wouldn’t have them auditing IMO.

 

Thanks so much for this comment.  This is the approach we're taking and I think it's starting to work.  Unfortunately the company I work for praises the brass band playing stuff so it hasn't been highly thought of.  The funny thing is that H&S did a whizz bang event last year in my company and if you look at the stats, it's made nothing better.  Look at food safety and quality metrics, things are getting better.  Always difficult to work out what is the cause of changes over a short time period but it's not looking good.  The relative investment in the two programmes was about half a million vs. maybe £5k max for our little food safety culture programme.  It was only when I was compiling all of the evidence into a folder for whenever BRC comes that I reflected and thought "yeah, we've done a pretty darn good job here."