The term “culture” is becoming such a vibe. Am I right? It’s like the buzzword of the business world. I used to sit in meetings where people would bring up the need to improve our food safety culture, and I would just cringe. To honestly say what I was thinking, “What do a bunch of scientists know about culture?”
To be fair, it may be a lot. This was several years ago when the concept was relatively new to our world. But food safety culture is a collective problem just as much as it is an individual problem. And the solutions that were being brought forth seemed to be “you”-oriented. Recommendations of improvement targeted at others, not an honest reflection of how we all contribute to the problem. It made me angry and defensive.
Do you know how many times I see a photo or video posted in media that has a food safety violation? Or the food safety guy from the sales company that shows up to harvest with a watch and tastes the fruit “for quality purposes.” Those behaviors are exactly what undermines improving our collective food safety culture. It unfairly becomes my problem when the people enforcing the rules don’t follow the rules themselves.
A company’s food safety culture is a reflection of the company’s culture. You cannot improve one without improving the other. As an industry, we are only as strong as our weakest link. Which means our collective culture is too.
Culture is all the things we say and do that we don’t *actually* say and do and vice versa. Generally speaking, a company’s culture can be determined by how much preparation goes into being “audit ready.” The more preparation, the weaker the food safety culture. More importantly, the weaker the company culture. (Because the food safety department is likely not getting the necessary support or resources to be audit ready always.)
A single department cannot and should not be held responsible for employee behaviors that represent the character of an entire company. It starts at the top. For example, a good company culture is when your supervisor or the owner wears a hairnet into the field when there’s not a food safety representative, an auditor, or customer present.
When people know full well the rules, it is deliberately disrespectful not to comply, and the behaviors hinder our goal of creating a strong and good food safety culture.
Actions speak louder than words.
If your companies’ foremen, supervisors, managers, or owners only wear a hairnet when there’s an audit, then that is the message you are sending to your employees. It’s saying, “we only follow the rules when someone of significance is watching.” Or when they don’t follow these rules in the day-to-day, yet enforce them for labor crews, then it’s saying, “I’m above the rules, but you are not.”
The flippant and entitled attitudes as perceived through those actions are contagious. Employees will disengage, and that begins the downfall of a good company culture.
What we seemingly get wrong, though, is that culture cannot be regulated. It cannot be forced or enforced. Culture begins with trust, respect, humility, and empathy. These are human qualities that develop with healthy relationships.
Requiring adherence to a scheme or program for good company culture will only create more audit fatigue and regulatory resentment. It’s counterproductive to the solution. People will comply to pass, and it will undermine the effort. It also becomes another one-size-fits-all approach to problems that need to be analyzed and nurtured individually.
Improving food safety, company, and industry requires an honest internal review. We have the expertise to help you navigate the analysis and the tools to implement an improvement path.