Why Management Needs to Commit Fully to Food Safety and Make Sure Employees “Understand the Why”

Employees need to understand the “why” behind food safety measures, and management must lead by example and fully commit to safety, SQF auditor and consultant Jody Peterson told Rootwurks. 

“Employees need to understand the reason that we’re looking at these [food safety] issues, and what the consequences are if we fail,” Peterson said. She added, “I think it helps people understand the principles of HACCP and food safety training if they know what could happen if this goes bad.”

She added, “in a facility, it's important that people understand why we are doing the steps that we’re doing, and understand that we’re not just checking off a box - we are living this safety program."

Drawing from her years of experience performing food safety audits and training food safety professionals in HACCP and SQF principles, Peterson said these issues are typically foreign to people entering the food manufacturing industry. But by understanding why food safety guidelines are so important, they begin to see themselves as essential to safety, and buy-in to the food safety program altogether.”

Among other examples, Peterson spoke about her time performing food safety training for the Women’s Bean Project. Based out of Denver, the non-profit provides job training and employment to “second chance women” who face significant barriers to work. The company sells a wide variety of bean-related food products, and the women who work there typically don’t have prior experience with food safety guidelines.

Why leadership has to get on board

Rootwurks spoke to Peterson as part of our ongoing campaign to highlight the challenges that food safety professionals face when it comes to training for safety and compliance.

In our report, “The Biggest Training Challenges in the Food Manufacturing Industry,” food industry professionals cited “lack of time” as their biggest challenge. But “management buy-in” was also mentioned repeatedly by a wide range of industry professionals. 

To Peterson, this is no surprise.

Peterson said that management commitment plays a big role in ensuring that employees understand the “why” behind training and commit fully to learning and that it is essential that they lead by example. 

“It starts at the very top. If employees see management come into the facility and they’re dressed properly and putting on hairnets and washing their hands and they aren’t above following food safety principles, it floats down to the employees.” 

She said that employees “need to feel empowered to reach out and say that’s not something that we actually do, or this is something that would work better. It shouldn’t be black and white; people need to be able to put in their input.”

Custom, dynamic, repeated training

Another theme that frequently appears in Peterson’s work is that a one-size-fits-all approach to training won’t get the job done. This is especially true if the training is seen as merely an obligation, with everyone going through the motions once a year.  

 ”I think we should give it [training] to them in pieces instead of telling them once a year we’re going to get together and train you on 20 topics and you need to know what those are.”

She added that companies often don’t verify that employees understand the training they received. 

She recommended that companies start new employees with basic HACCP training during the onboarding process and expand their learning through successive training rounds. She also advocates for regular or weekly huddles in which employees can discuss food safety issues and for the use of compelling visuals and examples that are relevant to the daily tasks employees face at work. 

It’s a marathon, not a sprint

But while our study showed that food industry professionals feel a real-time crunch when it comes to training, Peterson was clear about one thing - this is not a sprint.

“Take it piece by piece and make it a marathon, not a sprint. It’s not something you can implement in a single day; food safety is something that you need to live every single day.”

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