Attributes of a Company with a Strong Food Safety Culture

Adapted from an interview with Frank Yiannas

Number One: they generally do a pretty great job of explaining food safety expectations for employees at all levels of the organization– what they expect them to do around food safety, and what the behaviours are that they have to demonstrate – so they have clear food safety expectations.

Number Two: Organizations that are really good at this do a good job of training and educating all of their employees around food safety – there is a distinction between education and training because they are different.

Number Three: I find that great food safety cultures spend a lot of time communicating about food safety. Communication and culture are two sides of the same coin so if you were to walk into an organization that had a strong food safety culture, you would hear them talking about food safety, writing about food safety, there would be signs and symbols about food safety…it would be part of their communication.

Number Four: Organizations that are good at this establish goals because goals are the antecedents to behaviour. So, they’re really good at setting goals for food safety and they also measure, so they make sure they are performing well and making progress.

Number Five: And then the last attribute that I think is pretty common is organizations that have a strong food safety culture create consequences for food safety, and realizing that consequences are not necessarily a negative thing – there are positive consequences and negative consequences, but there ar econsequences for performance. Organizations that have strong food safety cultures generally place a lot of emphasis on positive consequences for strong food safety performances.

This was adapted from an interview with Frank Yiannas – view the original article here. https://globalfoodsafetyresource.com/effective-food-safety-culture-obstacles-development/