Promoting a Food Safety Culture: Free Assessment Guide

Many businesses in the food and drink market already recognise the importance of having a mature food safety culture within the workplace, but some still have a way to go. A mature food safety culture is a tool which has the potential to promote good food safety practices throughout the business. 

The topic of food safety culture has grown considerably over recent years, demonstrated by its continued inclusion in the latest release of the BRCGS standard (version 9). A mature food safety culture encourages employees to act and do the right thing when it comes to following food safety standards and procedures, even when they are not being observed. 

This article will discuss what food safety culture is and why it is important in your food business. We will explore ways to measure food safety culture, and provide guidance to help you assess your existing workplace food safety culture, and what an action plan should include. 

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What is Food Safety Culture?

Food safety culture is a relatively new term in food safety. It is incredibly difficult to define and many organisations have proposed definitions to meet their respective requirements of food safety culture.

Dr Joanne Taylor developed the term food safety culture in the Food Safety Culture Excellence Model. Dr Taylor wrote that food safety culture is the “prevailing attitudes, values and practices related to food safety that are taught, directly and indirectly, to new employees”. 

Since then, the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) and BRCGS have coined similar definitions. The GFSI defines food safety culture as “shared values, beliefs and norms that affect mindset and behaviour toward food safety in, across and throughout an organisation.” Whilst the BRCGS offers its’ definition as being: “The attitudes, values, and/or beliefs which are prevalent at the site, relating to the importance of product safety, and the confidence in the product safety systems, processes and procedures used by the site.” 

As you can see, there is much overlap between these definitions, but food safety culture is all of these things and more. It is composed of many specific aspects which are all equally important. Ultimately, food safety culture is exactly what you expect it to be – a culture of a business or workplace which emphasises all aspects of food safety and expects standards of safety to be of the highest level instinctively for all members of staff.

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Why is a Food Safety Culture Important?

Anyone who works in a food-based business will know how important it is that all staff are properly trained in their role within the organisation. Whilst it is easy to display posters to remind staff to uphold best practice procedures, and it is a relatively simple task to monitor compliance in the form of due diligence checklists, one of the biggest hurdles that organisations face is getting their employees to always act correctly even when they are not being monitored. 

Furthermore, the BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9 has expanded on food safety culture as a particular focus of attention. It is a requirement for senior management to demonstrate commitment and continual improvement to food safety culture within their organisation during an audit. The emphasis provides companies with the opportunity to have their food safety culture assessed, alongside their on-site food safety audit. To learn more about the BRCGS, take a look at our article Our Guide to Understanding BRCGS.

By promoting a food safety culture in their organisation, businesses can step up from providing training on food safety practices to staff, to seeing it in action from all employees at all times. This leads to benefits such as higher levels of compliance and high safety standards throughout the business, as well as having a more engaged workforce. 

What are the benefits of a positive food safety culture?

Having an excellent food safety culture can help your business. By establishing a culture of values, and correct attitudes, norms and priorities regarding food safety, you can help all staff understand their role and impact within the organisation. Understanding this will foster employee engagement and empower staff at all levels to naturally commit to maintaining the highest standards of food safety.

Furthermore, a well-established food safety culture within any organisation helps to establish long-standing relationships with suppliers, and customer bases. And it helps toward building a reputational brand. 

Whilst excellent scores and grades during an audit are desirable, during a crisis is where a positive food safety culture pays dividends. Any organisation that has an established food safety culture will have a strong and steady foundation on which to effectively manage any crisis with minimal disruption. Such a demonstration of competence instils confidence and gives reassurance to both customers and consumers alike. With the right food safety culture, companies can demonstrate their commitment to ethical practices.

What kind of characteristics does a well-developed food safety culture have?

An established food safety culture is also known as a mature, or well-developed food safety culture. A well-developed food safety culture is one that is working effectively, that is fundamental to daily working life for all employees in the organisation, and that seeks to continuously improve and operate sustainably. It will differ from business to business, and from site to site, but it should always be the ultimate aim.

To start with, a well-developed food safety culture must be promoted from the most senior levels of management to cascade effectively throughout the business. The management team must have a strong commitment to food safety and make it a priority, and senior staff members must demonstrate this through their everyday work. 

Procedures must be in place to allow staff at all levels to demonstrate their contribution to the culture. And in an ideal world, the cascading effect will feed into other employees’ responsibilities across all levels and departments of the business, until it emerges as a grassroots culture. Alongside this, strong discouragement of unethical and unacceptable behaviour should be highlighted. 

Why does a food safety culture matter to an organisation and its employees?

A mature food safety culture will help the organisation score highly and always be prepared for an unannounced audit. Emphasis on food safety will lead to fewer costly recalls and potentially brand-damaging food safety incidents. Essentially, unsafe behaviour is likely to result in unsafe food, and that can be an expensive outcome to manage – from product recalls, wastage, legal fees and damaged reputation. As such, this should be all the incentive an organisation needs to instil an excellent food safety culture.

Yet, in addition to these points, food safety culture also helps employees feel more engaged with their work. Knowing that they act in accordance with the organisation’s values and principles will align staff to be better workers and better ambassadors for the business. Food safety culture will therefore help improve staff engagement and retention. When a company has a mature food safety culture, it will inform everything about the business, from recruitment, GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) and employee performance, to overall business success. 

As outlined in the definitions above, culture is determined by the organisation’s values and the underlying norms and behaviours of existing employees. During the onboarding process with new employees, these values are communicated and passed along to new starters. It is therefore essential that new employees receive both excellent formal training on food safety practices, and that this training is supported by a culture of food safety among existing staff. 

However, food safety culture goes beyond the training given to employees. It’s one thing to have employees that know what to do regarding food safety, yet it’s another to be confident that those employees will naturally follow correct procedures at all times, even when unobserved. 

Developing a mature and well-established food safety culture encourages all within the business to hold food safety at the forefront, and to act at all times with its standard in mind. This will give you confidence that your business is operating in the best and safest way possible. Creating a mature and sustainable food safety culture is a difficult task to undertake, but it must be a priority for every business. Ultimately, food safety culture is born from an inherent sense of responsibility to provide safe food products to customers, consumers and communities worldwide. If you are responsible for food safety in your business, you may be interested in our other food safety management courses –  Internal Auditing and HACCP online training course.

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How Do You Measure Food Safety Culture?

Food safety itself is easily measurable and you can see it reflected in all manner of things in a business. It is evident in:

• Conformance to the HACCP plan. 
• Compliance with food safety procedures.
• A good audit score.
• Reduced non-conformances during an audit.
• Conducting and evaluating root cause analysis. 

It can also be seen in increasing sales, brand loyalty, low staff turnover and high staff engagement. To some extent, these can be useful in identifying your food safety culture – any business that does not score well in these areas will be unlikely to have a good food safety culture in operation. The level of maturity of your food safety culture will depend on how well-established it is, and how committed the senior leadership is to understanding it and supporting its implementation within the organisation. 

However, there is not one single framework that a business should use to diagnose existing culture, measure it, and suggest ways to manage it. Most businesses will assess their individual needs and combine resources. For example, using the GFSI framework alongside other well-known standards, such as the BRCGS, and implementing their guidance to suit your own business. We will look at the GFSI framework in more detail later on in this article. 

Measuring the food safety culture of an organisation can be very difficult. As we’ve discussed, food safety culture is often unseen – it is the actions that happen when staff aren’t being monitored that build culture. It is choosing the right way, not the easy way when no one is looking. Below, we’ll look at some ways in which you can think about measuring your food safety culture. Use the links below to look at each in more detail.

The ABC Model

The Culture Excellence Model

The GFSI Framework

The ABC Model

The first step to measuring and internally auditing your food safety culture is identifying what you currently have. You need to take the time to diagnose the level of culture currently in existence as that will help guide you in areas to improve upon. One model that may help is the ABC model, incorporating the Antecedent (trigger), Behaviour and Consequence. 

This is a useful tool to strengthen a business’s food safety culture as it allows you to see and manage behaviours within the workplace. Managing behaviours will reinforce and ensure the safety of the food and ultimately help inform the workplace culture. 

An antecedent is something that comes before a behaviour and is required for an individual to understand what is expected and how to perform a behaviour. For example, policy, stated expectations, training, job aids, stimulus, circumstances and past experience are all antecedents. A consequence is something that follows the behaviour and is caused by the behaviour. 

For example – new policies and procedures are being communicated to all employees on the correct handwashing technique. The antecedent is the training that is given, the expected outcomes and the policy itself, the behaviour is anything an individual does which is observable thereafter, and the consequence is based on what the employee does. There is a feedback loop in the behaviour, as what happened last time you behaved in a particular way will affect how you will behave the next time. Depending on the consequence, you will either sustain or change your behaviour.

Diagnosing the behaviours that are currently in existence in your business provides a starting point on which to build. However, you cannot confidently say that good results in these areas are indicative of an excellent culture 100% of the time – you cannot assume that observable behaviour leads to the same thing happening every time and even when unobserved.

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The Culture Excellence Model

When it comes to measuring your food safety culture, there are several methodologies that you can apply. One widely recognised model is the Culture Excellence Model which encompasses the Four Ps –  People, Purpose, Process and Proactivity. 

Recently, the Culture Excellence model was incorporated into the BRCGS as a voluntary module, offered alongside its BRC Food Safety Standard:

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The GFSI Framework

Since the development of the Culture Excellence model, other organisations have been keen to contribute to the topic, not least the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) which made a major contribution to this issue when, in November 2017, it published Food Safety Culture – A position paper from the Global Food Safety Initiative. This publication addresses food safety culture and how to implement a positive mindset in the organisation through various strategies. It has since formed the basis of how to develop a good food safety culture for many businesses. 

The GFSI document identifies five organisational dimensions structured for Food Safety Culture, and we’ll take a look at these in detail below:

• Vision and mission.
• People. 
• Consistency. 
• Adaptability.
• Hazard and risk awareness.

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When it comes to hazard and risk awareness in your food safety culture, employee engagement is a huge resource available to you. Do not underestimate it, but nurture its growth. Communicating food safety news from the CEO level demonstrates top-down engagement when matched with financial and people investment, which can be impactful to employees. Couple this with improving awareness and an understanding of issues across the industry for grassroots engagement, and you can inspire trust and belief from all employees in the food safety system. And we know that engaged employees will be more invested in contributing to, and supporting, the food safety culture. 

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Free Food Safety Culture Assessment Guide

The UK has some of the most respected and comprehensive food safety laws in the world. This is down to the continued emphasis on food safety and HACCP for everyone who is involved in the supply of food to consumers, and the adoption of additional global industry standards. Yet, to continue to be world leaders, we must pay attention to the food safety cultures within our businesses. 

The cultural standards within a business ensure everyday food safety protocols are upheld. They emerge through shared experiences and conversation, and they become intrinsic within the business through reinforced values, beliefs and actions. 

Below, we have devised a list of questions for you to use in your business to help you assess your food safety culture. Once you have evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of each site and department in the business, you should have a better understanding of the level of the existing food safety culture.

Food Safety Culture Assessment Guide

Once you have assessed the food safety culture in your workplace, you need to implement an action plan for the development and continuous improvement of your food safety culture. This plan should be specific to your organisation, include activities for all employees in areas of the business, and effectively address the areas for improvement. 

Action Plan 

Your action plan may encompass different activities based on your assessment of your existing food safety culture, but, as a minimum, you should look to improve upon the following areas:

• Clear and open communication on product safety.
• Training.
• Feedback from employees.
• Behaviour changes required to improve product safety processes.
• Performance measurement on product safety, authenticity, legality and quality-related activities.

Your action plan should include how the activities will be carried out and measured. They should have a timescale, and a review of effectiveness after completion and the plan should be reviewed and updated at least once a year. 

Employees need to actively and independently choose to do the right thing, regardless of observation. Still, even well-intentioned employees can struggle if they cannot access the proper tools, or the facility’s design and equipment make doing the right thing extremely difficult or time-consuming. Creating a mature culture is about expressing, nurturing and ultimately demonstrating desired attitudes and behaviours. Therefore, it makes training, communication, motivation and empowerment critical to the success of your business.

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We hope this article has been informative and gives you key takeaways for your workplace so that you can develop your food safety culture. For more information on our training, please get in touch with our sales team – email – phone – who will be happy to discuss your training needs. 

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