Raising the bar: Culture can support food safety

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Raising the bar: Culture can support food safety

24 Mar 2023

Joanie Spencer

Since 2008, Joanie Spencer has covered the retail and wholesale sides of the baking industry.
Serving associations such as the American Society of Baking (ASB) and BEMA, Joanie is also in demand as an industry presenter on bakery operations and trends. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from Rockhurst University and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri.

When she’s not running or playing soccer, Joanie spends her time with her husband and 11-year-old son.

NEW ORLEANS — In food manufacturing, culture and food safety might initially seem like unrelated concepts. While food safety requires hard skills with quantifiable results, culture is seen as more nebulous, often thought of as qualitative and leaning on soft skills.

However, when food safety is folded into the culture of a company, it can drive standards and yield better results.

During Intralox NEXT, held March 8-9 in New Orleans, various presentations and panel discussions addressed how culture can, in fact, support food safety.

One panel focused on developing a pipeline of skilled maintenance and operations workers, and culture is a big part of that.

On that panel, Brendon Russ, team lead for Americas reliability and asset management engineering services for JLL Work Dynamics, shared a specific definition of culture.

“It’s a set of accepted set of norms and practices set by a group of people,” he said. “Who determines what’s acceptable within a particular group or organization? The leadership. There are a lot of different leaders within an organization, so we look at how we integrate learning and training as a critical piece of what’s done on a daily basis to ensure there’s no disruption and the product goes out as it’s intended.”

David Patty, associate director of maintenance and refrigeration training at Springdale, AR-based Tyson Foods, noted the value in building training programs that start with plant managers, maintenance managers and utility managers to ensure buy-in from a team leadership level.

Developing simplified training programs helps with onboarding and engagement. Patty calls it the “easy button” method. Having resources creates a spark for engagement that gets the ball rolling.

“We can’y just go into a plant and give them 10 extra things to do when they already have their plate overflowing,” Patty said. “An ‘easy button’ is way to get the plant going in the right direction toward a training culture. When that happens, team members see an investment in themselves and understand the plant values them.”

Chris Polito, director of food safety for Inspire Brands, emphasized the importance — and benefits — of a corporate culture that prioritizes food safety.

“Culture has a direct correlation with hygienic design,” Polito said.

While training is inherently part of any good operation, it’s not necessarily a guarantee of safety. Take reporting, for instance.

In a bakery operation, reporting is critical for maintaining good food safety standards and practices. On the plant floor, there are two distinct options: find and report, or hide from consequence. This is the direct point where culture can influence what direction a line worker could choose.

Training is a critical part of workforce development, and culture is a big part of that. There have historically been two schools of thought for training: the “carrot,” or reward, mentality and the “stick,” or punishment, mentality. While the latter is the old-school method, it’s not going to influence a propensity for proactivity in food safety.

“It’s important to drive a culture to support the benefits of ‘find and report’ versus ‘find and hide in fear of consequence,’” Polito said. “That’s critical.”

If culture supports a hiding mindset, it’s very easy to cut corners, which will invite risk into the operation.

When the workforce has that right mindset, its likely more apt to focus on the nobility of proactivity to report food safety risks, not only from a microbial standpoint but also in terms of equipment failures or loose parts like nuts, bolts or screws.

“Prevention must be continuous across an operation,” Polito emphasized. “When employees see you invest in that, there’s pride in ownership.”

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