Food Safety Culture
Hello! it has been awhile since i have posted a question on this site. In 2023, our company had all employees complete a Food Safety Culture Survey of 5 general questions. Our SQF auditor kind of liked what we completed under the food safety culture section of the audit. He did say that we need a way to measure food safety culture. My question to you all is the following: What are you doing to "measure" food safety culture? I don't really want people to fill out another survey for the facility. I think this a cheap way of answering this portion of the audit. Also, surveys tend to be overlooked after awhile as well. Our facility posted the results for individuals to look at, but no feedback was provided. Thank you all in advance for your responses.
Annual refresher training and test. Grade and graph results.
Our survey I feel was obscured. We made it anonymous, although I believe some people did not feel like they could answer honestly. I do not want people to feel this way at all. I cover food safety culture in orientation. State that they have rights as an employee to simply say something if they see something. Stop the line if needed. That type of wording. Would you be willing to provide a sample of your test questions?
Each employee was given a login. Anytime someone saw something food safety related, safety related, gmp related, etc. They were encouraged to file a form, take a picture, and report it with partial anonymity (names known to supervisors and management). Positive things like seeing someone propery handle chemicals or following SSOPs, and negative things, like noticing a person foaming without proper PPE.
Redzone tracked the responses and made it simple to graphically represent, which showed clearly the food safety culture awareness and care around the plant. To aid this activity, someone from each shift received recognition once a month for reporting more entries and there were interdepartment competitions over it.
Perhaps you could try something like this? I am not recommending the software, only pointing out options that we exercised using it. I think it was fairly successful in measuring food safety culture and employee buy-in.
Good luck! 👍
Our survey I feel was obscured. We made it anonymous, although I believe some people did not feel like they could answer honestly. I do not want people to feel this way at all. I cover food safety culture in orientation. State that they have rights as an employee to simply say something if they see something. Stop the line if needed. That type of wording. Would you be willing to provide a sample of your test questions
Really it depends on your training. My test questions are specific to my training/the little video I show them. Just show them a food safety video that suits your application, and draw up some simple multiple choice and true and false questions based on that and any other training you do.
I think it somewhat depends on what you think food safety culture is and what makes up a positive food safety culture.
Below is a link the the GFSI white paper on food safety culture. It is some good information on how GFSI sees food safety culture.
https://mygfsi.com/w...ty-Culture-Full.
If you google "how to measure culture" there are usually ideas that always come up. The survey is almost always listed. Personally i think the 5 question survey is meaningless as it would be hard / impossible to evaluate all of the different components of food safety culture with only 5 questions.
Another way is metrics. Much like what semajzemog was eluding to in the different ways that different behaviors could possibly be measured.
You need to decide what you think it is important to measure (clear messaging, employee knowldege, employee engagement, employee empowerment, perfomance,etc)
then determine how you will measure.
We are just starting and I have put out surveys (11 questions) to 2 of the 4 sites I oversee just to get a baseline. I think annual survey's to gauge how you are progressing are recommended/required (I'm new to the food storage side from a non-food warehouse, so there is a lot of new info jumbled in my brain). They should all be anonymous and I'm bribing my team with candy if they fill it out at the end of the meeting when I introduce it (during an already scheduled meeting and they put their survey in a folder instead of handing it to me). 100% participation so far.
I also found a Food Safety Culture webinar from the FDA and STOP Foodborne Illness that was very interesting. There are 9 online and the 10th one is next week. It really got me motivated and gave me a lot of good ideas.
Collaborating on Culture in the New Era of Smarter Food Safety - 02/14/2024 | FDA
Based on what I learned in the webinar, my plan is to develop a site specific food safety team that meets monthly. Session 3 was the inspiration for that.
Amy
Hi best5308,
One of the key measures will be the extent to which the food safety culture plan has been implemented.
This can be supported by indications/measures of success/improvement in:
Food Safety Objectives & other Performance Measures
Internal Audit Reports
GMP Inspection Reports
Employee reviews
etc.
Kind regards,
Tony
We too had completed a couple of surveys but wanted to take a different approach. Culture is not always easy to measure.
We decided that as a positive culture comes from the top, it was important that Management were visibly accountable. We developed an objective to 'Promote a positive food safety culture' with the measurement being that 'Management complete a food safety culture improvement / reinforcement activity' each quarter. A couple of things included implementing a reward and recognition program and providing lunch another day for all employees.
Training and ongoing communication are also vital to include.