What motivates our employees to follow food safety requirements?

The focus of many food safety culture articles is on why employees DO NOT follow food safety practices or desired behaviours. It’s such a glass half empty approach even if it is very necessary to consider this angle.

But I recently came across some research where there was a focus on the MOTIVATORS as well as the BARRIERS for doing the right food safety measures. The results give us clues to consider improving our food safety culture.

This study was conducted by Susan Strobehn and her team and Iowa state university. It was aimed to determine employees’ motivators and barriers to following food safety practices in both non-commercial and commercial foodservice operations. The researchers gathered data by observing and interviewing 25 employees from 10 different foodservice operations. Their observations showed employees’ attempts to follow proper hand hygiene (e.g., handwashing, glove use) did not meet Food Code requirements (Food Code 2005, USA). The Non-compliances they observed ranged from 23.5% (personal hygiene practices) to 69.4% (cleaning and sanitizing procedures).

When employees were interviewed as to why they did comply with recommended practices, findings revealed eight motivators:

• avoiding bacterial growth and cross-contamination
• not harming customers
• knowledge and training
• required by law
• regulations and procedures
• good practices/habits
• rewards
• culture of workplace
• and satisfying customers

These motivators can help us in enhancing our training programmes and food safety management systems.

Some ideas you could try

Understanding and illustrating the potential rapid bacterial growth using agar plates and videos can help employees to grasp the hidden dangers in our processes. Acknowledging the correct behaviours with small tokens like “thank-you’s”, muffins for tea, 5 more minutes for lunch break etc., can go a long way to motivating staff (personally I don’t think should use monetary rewards).

Interviewing the EHP during a training session and showing photos of videos of our customers in training programmes makes the messaging more personal. Statistics don’t motivate our hearts.

They tell us it takes 21 days to develop a habit. Why not try talking about the right practices every day during a 5-minute team meeting will help to reinforce “the way we do things here”. Walking around on the floor daily for 21 days and consistently and positive enforcing and the right practices will help to support the development of habits and the establishment of a positive food safety culture.

References

Susan Arendt, Catherine Strohbehn and Jinhyun Jun, Motivators and Barriers to Safe Food Practices: Observation and Interview, Food Protection Trends, Vol 35, No. 5, p.365–376, 2015