How many people in the food industry actually head to work with that thought in their minds?
Not many. But we do have continual food safety breaches - and sometimes the people concerned don't even realise what they are doing.
Okay Production Managers, I’m going to show you how to manage your process, not the people, to get the most value from your Quality System . How to make your staff want to comply with the Quality System and be your best advocates for Food Safety.
This will be useful to help you get results from the system to justify the money you spend on maintaining it.
What you’ll learn is how to ensure everyone understands what the system is, why it’s there and why it’s important that everyone – from the CEO to the most junior operator – knows what their responsibilities are and how it affects the end results.
These are the steps you need to take
· Develop a training plan so that every member of staff knows:
o What the system is designed to do
o Why it’s necessary
o What the impacts are if the system is not followed
o What benefits can accrue for the company – and therefore the staff (make them aware that if the company succeeds and does well, their jobs are more secure and they are likely to have greater job satisfaction)
· Follow up
o Monitor the records
o Give feedback to staff of wins and gains as well as problems
o Discuss what has worked well and what needs to be improved
o Reward those who are going above and beyond
If you follow these steps everyone in the company will understand why the systems are in place and what their role is to ensure the company complies with all standards and continues to improve.
What if there’s a better way than just sitting back and hoping that everything will fall into place and there are no unexpected problems.
I hope this has been interesting and useful. It’s just a small part of ways I help clients to utilise their Quality Systems to do more than just pass an audit. Let’s have a chat if you would like to know more about how to apply these principles to your process.