How much do you feel like your organisation treats audit results as a sign that everything is fine?
How accurate is that as a measure?
Now I'm on the other side of a lot of this kind of work, I'm starting to see a lot of factories. I'm old enough and have been on the "other side" enough to know when I'm being led around a factory by people stage managing the day. To an extent I'm not offended as I know people do it to keep noise away but I'm also not fooled by it.
But I also get the feel the plants doing the most stage management are often the most deluded with the worst cultures.
Why? Not just because if there's a lot of stage management, there's probably a lot wrong but also, if I can walk into your factory as a stranger and smell the signs of BS, your operators can too. And that is telling them either that you don't trust them or you cannot be trusted (or both).
The more I look into it, the more I get a sense that without a level of humility, sites that have reached absolutely great audit scores will constantly be the proverbial swans, gliding on the surface and piling effort into paddling furiously underneath to keeping trying to make it all look good. They will plug away at food safety culture plans because the standard tells them to do it not actually making any progress and wondering why.
Because to my mind, culture is about being good not looking good. And sometimes to actually BE good, you have to look bad and be prepared to look bad. Without all of the problems out there, honestly on display, they will not be fixed.
We've all done it, had the list of 20 things to every 1 the auditor has seen thinking "We will fix that later when they're gone."
You won't. Or rather you won't fix them all. Because the pressure will be off, the factory will move onto the next crisis and it won't be fixed.
So you will work bloody hard, probably burn yourself out at least once in your career. (Twice isn't unusual for Technical people.)
And for what?
What if we just let things be seen as they are? Work hard for compliance year round for sure, but stop the BS. Stop misdirecting auditors so they don't see what you've just seen...
What if we were vulnerable in front of the auditor but strong the rest of the year? Right now it feels like Technical people do the opposite.
My question for you. Is it helping you? Is it actually making food safer?
