"No Shortcuts for Food safety" - Food Safety Magazine Panel Discusses the Challenges of Change Implementation

In the high-stakes, fast-paced world of food manufacturing, implementing change can be especially challenging. And with the ever-present risk of contamination outbreaks, food safety recalls, and workplace injuries, implementing the change needed to create a strong safety culture is essential. 

This week, Food Safety Magazine hosted the webinar “Change Management of Food Safety Culture: Effective Strategies for Achieving Greatness,” to tackle this subject. Featuring industry experts,  Hugo Gutierrez, formerly the global quality, safety, health and environmental and environmental officer at CARI, Kimberly Crawford, vice president of Human Resources and safety at Birchwood Foods, and Lone Jespersen, Ph.D., Principal and Founder, Cultivate SA, the webinar dived deep into what companies must do to bring change - and create a culture of safety. 

Create a predictive safety culture 

Industry veteran Lone Jespersen spoke about the importance of building a more predictive safety culture. She said that in consulting with food companies you often have to get back to the basics. She said you have to do what you can to get leadership more involved with food safety and help them understand what it means for the business. 

Jespersen said that she has seen a major shift in food safety in the past decade, with far more companies saying that they are pursuing safety training not only to meet compliance demands, but mainly to improve and grow their business.

Recognition is key to food safety

It’s not just enough to lay out food safety culture, you also have to recognize your team members who are putting in the work. 

“If you want to make lasting change, you have to recognize people for it. You have to recognize to realize,” Jespersen said, adding that it is crucial for employees to trust their senior leadership. 

She said that daily conversations between management and employees make a major difference and that these conversations are crucial to achieve lasting change. 

“When we talk about change management of food safety culture and effective strategies, we can have the best strategies in the world but if we haven't put the effort into recognition and what motivates people, we are likely not going to see that light bulb change and we'll stay in darkness forever,” Jespersen said. 

Not just change, lasting change

The webinar focused largely on the question of how to find the right path for creating a food safety culture at your company and why its important to continuously reinforce whatever path you choose. The panelists also sought to reinforce the message that it’s not enough to make change, you have to make lasting changes.

“It’s not only a matter of changing things once. You have to also look at year two, three, and four,” Hugo Gutierrez said

He added, “a strategic plan has to be a long term plan.”

Gutierrez said that what you do every year has to build on what you did in the previous year, otherwise your plan to create a food safety culture will probably not account for much. 

It’s also crucial that everyone be on board.

“The CEO needs to be there. The Financial Director must be there. The Marketing Director needs to be there.”

And it’s not just enough for leadership to say they support food safety, they also have to provide the resources and time needed to make these changes a reality, Guieiterez said.

Make the culture intentional

 When it comes to implementing change and building a food culture, it's important that the company views the process as transformational - not transactional. 

“Our journey was about culture, curating shared values, beliefs and behaviors, and realizing what we believe,” Kimberly Crawford said. 

She described the journey her company Birchwood Foods launched to build a food safety culture, and how it required “getting into the hearts and minds of everyone on our plant floors and from our leadership.”

Crawford said it's also of the utmost importance that employees feel emboldened “to say something if they see something,” and to know they won’t face consequences. 

Crawford related a case study of a front-line employee who found a small black rubber ring in a finished product and raised the red flag to management, who stopped the production process. 

“That employee had no fear of retaliation or discipline because we’re going to stop the line during production." 

No Shortcuts for Safety Culture 

Towards the end of the webinar, the guests were asked how they would sum up successful change management in one sentence. 

For Crawford, it was about understanding what the process entails. 

“There are no shortcuts to transforming. We want everything to be great tomorrow, next month, and next year.”

She added “we are creatures of habit so we need time for these strategies to take hold to measure their effectiveness."

Gutierrez gave a similar assessment, saying “we all need to recognize that change management is hard…it requires a village so don’t try to do it by yourself.” 

He added that companies need to understand that there is only so much that any employee can absorb at any point, and that “you want to make sure you allocate the right time for the change.”

Jespersen was asked how small organizations can implement change and if it's more complicated for companies with fewer employees in which each team member is responsible for a wide array of tasks. 

Jespersen said she thinks it can be easier in a small company because there are fewer voices and people to get on the same page. 

I think that the opportunity small companies have versus large ones is that there’s not as many voices that have to be aligned for you to create lasting change.”

And whether the company is big or small, Jespersen said the goal will ultimately be the same - even if the paths are different.

“When we're talking about change management, we're talking about achieving greatness. There is not one path that fits everybody.”

If you missed the live stream of the webinar, you can still view it here: