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How to effect an effective Food Safety Culture Change

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dbriggs802

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Posted 13 August 2018 - 11:01 AM

Hello Group
 
I am a Life time member and either attend the webinars and or view the webinars that are supplied by this Group at a later time. I also down load the slides for future reference material and if there are others in the Quality Department who wish to review these materials. Actually this material is available to anybody who have an interest.
 
I have been given the daunting task of both developing and presenting Food Safety information to the workers at our plants to effect a Food Safety culture change of the workers in all departments and the Upper Management team.
After completing  a lot of research, I fully understand that this culture change will not happen overnight, needs to be presented in small bits that is relevant to the workers to be the most effective.
 
I have seen a lot of theoretical and a few papers on what needed to be completed and was completed to effect a Food Safety Culture change. Unfortunately, the information I have seen seems to indicate the workers they are dealing with probably have a much higher degree of motivation to succeed than what the Quality Group will be dealing with at our plant. The unemployment rate in my location is about 3% and our employees seem to have a difficult time in following through. Trying to motivate the production workers does not seem to be effective and I hear horror stories all the time of people and corporate in the past.
 
The reason I am giving you all this information is that I am wondering if anybody has ever worked with a similar situation; where they have tried and were successful in effecting a cultural shift in the employees and Corporate. Where did they start and what was successful for them?
 
I hope I was clear enough, if you have any questions or need any clarification please contact me soonest; and any information that you or the group may have would be extremely helpful.
Thank yopu
David W. Briggs


dbriggs802

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Posted 13 August 2018 - 11:30 AM

I forgot to make known a quote that the long time QC Lab people and people on the floor keep stating over and over again if and when issues are brought up concerning product"

"When in doubt, ship it out!"

Which is the wrong mentality the workers to have concerning product for the customer.



jcieslowski

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Posted 13 August 2018 - 12:16 PM

I've been in a high turn over plant as well as a union plant as well as a plant where 80% of the workforce spoke Bengali.  Here's my tips:

 

1.  Make it VERY clear to everyone that there will be NO leniency at all on CCPS.  Explain how that's the thing that gets the company shut down and you and them and the bosses thrown in jail.  You can (especially at the beginning) forgive an improper handling of wash down hoses or not wearing a hairnet properly but a missed CCP check is immediate disciplinary action and falsifying a CCP check is immediate dismissal.  Make sure supervisors know this and are pushing it for you too.  Then make sure that managers and senior management are pushing that too.  (in my experience, you'll always have that one rebellious supervisor who thinks they know what's right because they've done it forever and they've never had problems in the past [which is likely not true])

 

2. Start to get all levels to look at situations with the CUSTOMER in mind first.  Use phrases on the floor like "would you like your kids to eat that?  Why would you send it to our customers?" and use phrases with management / supervisors like "If we don't get this right, customer X is going to drop us".    Ultimately, you want everyone to know that getting the certification = more business = more stable jobs and (if your company doesn't suck) higher pay or, conversely, NOT getting up to date on food safety = less business opportunities which will eventually mean less jobs / money. 

 

3. You're going to be a babysitter for a month.  Plan to spend at least a few hours a day on the floor to JUST correct people at the beginning.  Remind / correct employees on a few topics you're concerned with:  hair nets, hand washing, handling utensils, touching food contact surfaces.  Just remind them every day for most of the week and then on Thursday and Friday say "ok, now I've been talking about this for a while now and we need to get it together.  Next week, it'll be a write up."

 

4.  Although most senior managers understand the importance of a good food safety culture, some will not care at all and are all about the money.  This sucks but then you have to just remind them that it's really hard to fake a GFSI level audit - the auditor will know if you're not 'all in' on food safety.  Even if they don't personally subscribe or believe, you need to tell them, essentially "look, this is what we need to get / keep customer x and going forward all our new big customers want it too" and then they will decide that they're committed to doing what it takes to get there.

 

So that's my approach.  Remember that it's evolution, not revolution to keep employees and managers on board.  Or, in food safety terminology, continuous improvement.  Perseverance and perspiration will get you through.   Good luck!


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Ryan H.

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Posted 13 August 2018 - 07:06 PM

it's all about Management Commitment here. I agree that you as a QA/ Food Safety person should share your ideas and expertise with your peers and work on changing the culture within your organization, but if you want to change the culture BEGIN at the top. Your senior officials should have as much if not more stake in it as you do. That's the best route to go. 

 

I would ask that of them and based on there response, you will find out rather quickly how much commitment they have. 

 

Good Luck. 


All the best, 

 

Ryan Heavner 


012117

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Posted 14 August 2018 - 12:33 AM

Hi, Dbriggs802.

 

This is what we have implemented. Fortunately for ours, we have low turnover rate.

 

1. If you have monetary scheme at the end of the year for performances, you may want to add food safety as part of the objective. Also, as oppose to the usual quality reduction or micro problem reduction, you may want to discuss to plant manager that if he/she can make the objective of production manager is completion of one project related to food safety issue (especially the recurring one).

2. Propose if you can do at least weekly management GEMBA but ensure that we people do Gemba, the senior management takes time to perform quality observation and interact with people in the shop floor. Sometimes, the issues is people in the shop floor does not see any management and feels like they don't support them. Also sometimes, senior management implement so many standards without understanding first so much what is happening in the shop floor. It is the reason sometimes they felt there is disconnect with what you are trying to implement and what is really doable at the moment. Also, if they don't see someone "coaching" them, sometimes, the practices (even the wrong one) becomes the norms.

3.Establish recognition system, the reward can be as simple as applauding the people or monetary.

4.Target measures that addresses quality behavior. E.g. for example in a year, your top issue is always Salmonella (+) is spot A. Understand the behavior in spot A, it may be people are not doing the cleaning, or there are leaks that they are not reporting, and it could be these behavior which can be the measure of people in the shop floor.

5. Launch emotional communication where your own people or their children will be the one in the posters.

6. Food safety and quality day.

 

The lists goes on, but again, as stated, to implement food safety culture, it is always good to understand first your current situation and what people wanted and retrofit the type of program that will understand by majority.



Kylo

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Posted 21 August 2018 - 08:10 AM

Hi dbriggs802
This concern also bordered me previously.
Brief explanation on our approach.
First to get management commitment, make them aware, understand, accept how important food safety is. Secondly, support from other department supervisory level will definately help the situation. In fact, i find this is the most crucial in order to create a good fs culture as they are the one who execute it. Qa role is for monitoring.

Then implement, executive and very close follow up thru normally did by qa team.

Frequent training/coaching to workers to explain reason behind. From my experience, this method is work but take years to show the results.

Kind sharing.
Rgds..

Sent from my vivo 1609 using Tapatalk



dbriggs802

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Posted 22 August 2018 - 04:50 PM

I want to thank everybody for their input How to effect an effective Food Safety Culture Change and fully understand that this could very well be an up hill task that needs the by-in by everybody.

Also, Please keep the responses coming for all those that have tried to effect a food safety culture change, be it successful or not.

Thanks

David

 



QualitySafetyPro

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Posted 22 August 2018 - 07:39 PM

Any North American based companies and plants here?  Regulatory changes and strictness can help pinpoint the understanding of needs better.



FurFarmandFork

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Posted 30 August 2018 - 02:05 PM

I've got an article that was born out of some discussions on this forum.

 

Post: http://furfarmandfor...safety-culture/

 

There's a helpful discussion of some shared struggles on the forum here: http://www.ifsqn.com...stions-welcome/


Austin Bouck
Owner/Consultant at Fur, Farm, and Fork.
Consulting for companies needing effective, lean food safety systems and solutions.

Subscribe to the blog at furfarmandfork.com for food safety research, insights, and analysis.

PQEdwards

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Posted 31 August 2018 - 09:55 AM

Hi,

 

Really just to compliment some of the other great comments made, based on my experiences; 

 

Managment support and involvement is crucial; my experience is that is if the management team visibly demonstrate that food/product safety ativities are of interest and important to them, then this cascades down to rest of the team.

 

Education and perspective; relate the impact of the contamination in a way that the team can understand. For example relating how they and their family or friends might be directly effected by an something they do or don't do, or relate the costs (product recall or scrap product) to something they might buy routinely

 

No tolerance; Ultimately once the requirements have been explained and the context to why it is required then having no tolerance to failure to conform to these requirements has to be clear and visible

 

Praise; we all get told when we haven't done well but praise is less common. But have some clear KPIs on compliance to procedures and when they are met congratualting and occasionally rewarding the team can be invaluable.

 

It will be long process but it can be done.

 

Regards

 

John   



farshad2008

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Posted 03 July 2019 - 03:02 PM

for safety ( food safety ) culture changes we have to keep in mind that we need a powerful word .

what is that ? YES 

everybody in your company should say yes (accompany with you ) like a weeding ceremony to say yes for a commitment (engagement )

 

changing is time consuming and we have to know  there are some strong cognitive distortion .

 

ABC model ( Antecedent -Behavior-Consequent) is a toolbox to touch the perception .

A and C can help to change the behavior.(B)

consider the staff who don't care about the food allergen ;we can ask an staff who has a kid that suffer from food allergen to talk for others (Story telling)

we can put some posters of food allergen reaction on the board.( Consequences)

Based on Glasser choice theory there are some filters between the reality and the perception (senses,knowledge-value) but it is not enough . I suggest to read relevant books.(choice theory)


Edited by farshad2008, 03 July 2019 - 03:04 PM.




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