Senior Management Commitment

Ensuring the effectiveness of our Food Safety and Quality Management System (FSQMS) is critical to our success and reputation. One key factor in this is the level of support we receive from senior management, and it is often lamented by those responsible for maintaining the FSQMS. Please share your experience regarding how much support you feel is provided for FSQMS within your organization. 

I'm lucky enough to have 100% ownership support.

<looks both ways>

I have ownership and senior management support, but they are reluctant to allow deviations for individual plants and plans. I have doing SQF since 2008(?) I know we can tailor things to what machines or processes we actually HAVE.

I have full support of management because they have worked in my position previously and understand the requirements. At my interview when they told me this, that's what convinced me to become a part of the team!

I answer directly to the president, and in his absence (which is all the time now as he's semi-retired) his son, the VP. This might be the first place I've been where the upper management culture isn't "how can we make this work even if it shouldn't" but instead it has been questions like "hey I don't feel comfortable with this, what are your thoughts?" I guess that's the benefit of family owned over corporate environment.

At my current place, senior management is more supportive than any other employer I've had thus far. I have many different departments ask me about food safety regulations, SQF, etc. relevant to their job duties, so it's nice to see that everyone knows who to go to already (they've never had a QA Manager before). I report directly to the COO and in her absence, the President.

And even though training sessions can be boring, I've had great feedback from staff who received training from me on various topics. :-) So far it feels like everyone is motivated to "do the right thing" so-to-speak. 

Oh man, someone actually voted No Support. Unfortunate; probably some sad stories there. In my past I've emptied my office, packed my box, and walked at 'minimal'. I can't even fathom no support...

I don't know how a (food)business can sustain with no support for safety and quality. There is usually more to the story. 

I get a LOT of lip service, then heavy sighs as they get tired of me bringing a topic up over an over again.  If I'm lucky things that need to be done/purchased only take 3ish months to wear them down (buying color coded cleaning tools - we are non-production, but do store allergens).  There have been a couple things I've been working on since Jan that still haven't happened, mostly updating forms they could easily give me access to for a few minor changes (like adding a document number) and on-line training that they said they wanted people to do, but not enough to actually buy the courses and tell people to do them.  There is always an excuse or "I'll work on that after my 2 o'clock meeting..."

I have seen a big change over my time in the food industry.

I'd say site leaders have moved on massively.  With great support nowadays.  There's still the odd operations and engineering d-head who tries to view quality as an impediment.

BUT at a more senior level, there is still a lot of talk and little action.  I write that as someone who has worked a lot across businesses.  I don't think it's always deliberate either.  Often it's because food safety and quality is treated as a "given" when in all honesty health and safety is seen as something we need to consistently drive.  The latter probably because of a serious incident or, sadly a fatality at some point.  I think that the fact that serious harm to consumers isn't seen by the CEO / MD as it might not be known on the root cause by the consumer.

Towards the end of my last full-time contract I refused to approve a supplier as their facility was not in a suitable condition to produce the raw material supplied to us, with a significant risk of contamination in the facility from environmental pathogens including Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes.

The Owner of the facility bought the product by the shipload anyway  :angry: What level of support would you have rated that? 

Happy to be here and not there, and as a bonus there was a subsequent major issue with the raw material  :smile:

Kind regards,

Tony

Unfortunately, I have limited support. Upper management often undermines the controls I put in place and disregards the established code, bypassing important protocols. Their philosophy prioritizes minimizing costs and maximizing sales, often at the expense of safety.

I am incredibly fortunate to have strong senior management support, but I also work for a small company that was founded on the principle of producing allergy safe foods. So food safety was top of mind right from the conception of the business. I am tremendously grateful to my incredibly hardworking and thoughtful team.

My last job was exactly the opposite. Management didn't understand or care. It was a low risk process and so management felt that meant it was a no risk process, thereby introducing a bunch of risk that we didn't need to have because "We've always done it this way, so its fine." It was not fine. The expectations were that I would rubber stamp anything they wanted to do and then just write risk analyses that basically said they could do whatever they wanted, since everything was low risk, and then just do "whatever it took" to make sure things looked good for the audit. No one even attended the opening or closing meetings for my SQF audit! I opened 12 CAPA's in my first 2 weeks, pulled everything together for the audit by myself, and had my first interview for a new job the day after the audit the was over. Left in less than 9 months.

There is some moderate interest but generally the prevention consept is not something that has "high posibilities" to "survive"...

A quick question; do any of your businesses have a food safety expert at the highest level?  I.e. as high a level as finance or operations?  

It's a provocative question I know but there has only been one business I've worked in where that's been true. Only one.  And ultimately if there isn't a person in the room who really understands food safety when there are questions regarding acquisitions, money, strategy and resource, how can you really have 100% commitment?  Or are you treating your begging bowl being filled occasionally as that commitment? 

I guess it would depend on your definition of 'expert.' My boss (owners' son, V.P.) has his HACCP and SQF Practitioner certs in my food safety training binder. He recently corrected me during a discussion of our HACCP plan for a distinction I should have known but would never expect an owner to know.

Not saying we don't have the typical problems that come with managing quality in medium smallish business, but thankfully owner buy in on quality isn't on that list.

I have finally taken the plunge and become an independent contractor.  Mostly because I'm fed up with the revolving door of people who want a fancy presentation rather than something that actually makes a difference.

In one employer, the most senior roles in businesses were preserved ONLY for people who had commercial experience.  This meant that the most senior people didn't know what my job was and mostly didn't care.

For those who doubt culture is important, the companies with the worst cultures are the ones with people at the top who think food safety and health and safety aren't things they need to worry about every day.  Some of them will get away with it.  Some of them will kill people.  And sadly the people who are obsessed with the pretty pictures and the £s are now increasingly leading our organisations in the UK.

It will lead to disaster I tells you.