Culture Excellence seminar 2024

2 January 2025

Given the wide-ranging benefits it can deliver, it is widely acknowledged that building a strong food safety culture is a key component to the ongoing success of any business operating in the food industry.

That is why on the 3 and 4 of December we welcomed a global audience of delegates to our live online Safety and Quality Culture Excellence event, in partnership with Taylor Shannon International (TSI), to discuss the latest developments and discuss how attendees could improve their business cultures.

Here is an overview of the event’s key highlights.

Introduction and culture update

Presented by Bertrand Emond, Campden BRI

Introducing our case study presenters and panel debate speakers, our chair and event director Bertrand Emond, opened each day with an overview of what culture is within the context of the food industry. This included presenting a range of culture definitions from across the industry, where there was consensus that if we are to establish a positive and strong food safety culture there needs to be shared responsibility and accountability among food businesses.

We were reminded that if we are to develop a strong and positive culture, we need to ensure people are doing the right thing correctly at all times, even when under pressure and when no one is watching. To support this, delegrates were introduced to the four pillars that underpin this: competence, confidence, ability and motivation.

After referencing the many pieces of legislation brought in during recent years to make food safety culture a necessary business requirement, Bertrand also touched on some of the key tools and best practice methods that can help with the ‘what’ and ‘how to’ of building a food safety culture. These included a ‘Culture of Food Safety’ guide from the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) and the PAS 320 guide from the BSI, which is based on the Plan-Do-Check-Act best practice methodology for continuous improvement of quality management systems.

Bertrand also reminded attendees about the peer-reviewed Culture Excellence model, with its four key categories (People/Process/Purpose/Proactivity) and 20 dimensions supporting this, which have been proven to be crucial in driving excellence.

The importance of training to help nurture the right behaviours for supporting food safety, quality and culture excellence was also touched on. To reinforce this, Bertrand highlighted a number of key points to come out of our Global Training Survey 2024. This included the fact that ‘one size does not fit all’ when it comes to training. To be succesful that training must be adapted to individual needs, as different people have different ways of learning.

Having developed the business culture that they want; the next biggest challenge is to sustain and improve it.

This led us perfectly into the case study presentation sessions, where we explored and debated this issue in more detail.

Day 1: Keeping the culture fires burning! How do we keep momentum after a few years of assessing our culture?

Following Bertrand’s seminar introduction, attendees gained lots of advice and tips from the following industry presenters outlining how they maintain momentum with food safety cultures within their own businesses.

Keeping the culture momentum

Sharon Birkett, Vice President Global QA Operations, OSI Group

To maintain and improve food safety culture at OSI, Sharon emphasised how they incorporate strong best practices into their operations.

A key part of this is to expect their staff to demonstrate three common daily behaviours:

• Look out for each other and be proactive in identifying potential food safety risks
• Speak up if you see any food safety concerns
• Act now by putting food safety practices into action always

Sharon outlined the key channels of communication that they use to disseminate this effectively across their global organisation and sites, with their food safety action plans and toolkits also crucial to this process.

Sharon also affirmed the importance of training, feedback surveys, metrics and storytelling to keeping their programme on track and making further food safety improvements.

Keeping the culture fires burning

Julia Ferrell, Director of Food Security & Regulatory Compliance Corporate Quality Assurance, Bay State Milling

In her presentation, Julia stressed the importance of the culture survey and good follow up practices following their analysis of employee feedback, to maintain healthy momentum within a food safety culture programme, highlighting the need to:

• Consistently communicate progress
• Actively reinforce positive behaviours
• Regularly solicit staff feedback
• Integrate cultural values into all aspects of the organisation

Julia also emphasised some of the tools they use to achieve this, from having more direct conversations with employees and praising them whenever they exhibit positive behaviours, to company awards that recognise staff who have gone above and beyond to do the right thing for customers.

Before wrapping up, Julia highlighted some final steps that can keep good culture momentum flowing within your organisation. These ranged from continually assessing your existing culture and leading by example, to prioritising work-life balance and well-being, and addressing challenges and conflicts head-on.

How we are progressing with our culture studies

Prof Bizhan Pourkomailian, Director - Global Food Safety Restaurant & Distribution, McDonald's Restaurants

Following his introduction to McDonalds and its key values including sharing, openness and honesty, Prof Pourkomailian, was also keen to emphasise the value of culture surveys, which his company first started using six years ago.

However, to get the greatest benefits Prof Pourkomailian highlighted that we need to understand what microcultures might exist within a culture, as different departments may have slightly different ways of working. While one could be more focused on working together, another could be more concerned with sharing practices. Consequently, if we are to improve the overall culture, we need to recognise this and tailor our support for each department.

To achieve this, Prof Pourkomailian, stressed the need for empathy and equity, as each department typically has different resourcing needs. There would also be a requirement to continually check back to see how things are progressing and make further improvements as and when they were needed.

Food Safety and Quality Culture

Su Dakin, Head of Food Safety and Quality, British Sugar

In her presentation, Su was keen to highlight how culture should be viewed as an ongoing journey, rather than a final destination based on a series of specific actions.

Su’s presentation majored on the concept of the Bradley Curve, which depicts an intrinsic link between safety, performance and the company culture. The belief here is that most unsafe incidents are caused or could be prevented by employee behaviours. Subsequently, as a company culture improves and moves from an immature reactive culture to a more aspirational interdependent one, where employee responsibility and behaviour improves, the number of unsafe incidents falls steeply.

While this model can help you identify where you are on the cultural curve and devise your respective next steps, you still need to work with your stakeholders before setting a robust plan, as different functions and departments can all be in slightly different places on this.

Su was keen to stress that you can’t just jump to an interdependent culture state. It is critical to have the right foundations in place in terms of training, procedures, rules, and management and stakeholder buy in. It also requires a lot of ongoing effort and commitment.

Panel discussion

Featuring speakers Sharon Birkett, Julia Ferrell, Prof Bizhan Pourkomailian, Su Dakin, and Alison Wright, Director FSQA APAC, Aryzta.

In this session our panel of experts were tasked with answering a series of questions related to maintaining a strong and positive food safety culture.

How do you plan to communicate short stories to your employees?

Sharon Birkett advocated the use of global ambassadors to communicate their ideas back to site champions, who could then disseminate these messages at the site level.

Alison Wright also stressed the importance of establishing an emotional connection when telling these stories. Her view was that if you can establish such a connection, others will be more likely to share these stories, which helps you reach other groups of people much quicker and build your programme’s momentum.

How do you decide who to nominate as your champions and your ambassadors?

Su Dakin suggested a multifaceted approach to getting the type of people you need. This mix would include those with a passion for the topic of culture, who could then become beacons of light for your programme. In addition, influencers could make it easier for you to engage others, while if you can turn around doubters, you will really know that you are making great strides with your programme.

In addition, Julia Ferrell suggested that suitable people would also need to meet a number of requirements and personal characteristics for this. This included the need to be located onsite and supportive of their annual awards, collaborative in personality, able to give and receive feedback, and able to influence others.

Is there any advice about how to effectively communicate and pitch at the right level to reach everyone?

Alison Wright stressed the importance of considering things from your employees’ point of view with questions like: What matters most to our people? What’s in it for them?

But she also said it was important to ask questions from your businesses point of view too, such as: What is most important to our business? Why are we doing this?

Sharon Birkett emphasised the importance of using the right communication channels and tools, suggesting that this should be left to the local plant managers to decide, as they will understand what works best for the particular culture at their site.

In addition, Prof Pourkomailian stressed the need to always make sure your communications are relevant to the job title of the person you are communicating it to.

How do you maintain cultural excellence long term, particularly with temporary or seasonal staff?

Alison Wright suggested that once again you need to be asking yourself: What’s in it for them?

You would also need to instil to seasonal staff, why food safety and quality is so important, after all they could be consumers of your product themselves one day.

Prof Pourkomailian suggested that in a large global food business such as McDonald’s, it is also in the self-interest of staff to maintain the best possible performance and behaviours, as many of them may choose to move between stores to support personal pursuits like travelling. If these staff can show they are reliable and maintain their employer’s trust, it will be easier for them to get work in other stores as the travel across the world.

Summing up day one’s learnings

Summing up from an action planning perspective Dr Joanne Taylor, Co-founder of Culture Excellence and TSI, was keen to stress the importance of managing expectations when building a food safety culture. This is because many of us work in well-established and large complex organisations, where even getting a handle on culture is something to be proud of.

With this in mind, Dr Taylor highlighted the need to set realistic targets, including having an effective plan of what you need to do and how you are going to measure this.

She also picked up on the importance of communication, with the value of storytelling providing a particularly powerful way of engaging people and encouraging them to display positive behaviours. This can be further reinforced through camaraderie, which is built on trust. The reason for this is because when you have this trust, you are more likely to borrow and share ideas with others.

Dr Taylor also emphasised the need to display empathy and equity, as it’s important for any culture plan to consider what effect your changes will potentially have on the people who work for you. It is also important, as people are more likely to believe you when you say you care about food safety, if you have demonstrated that you care about them. In addition, it’s important to dedicate some time to celebrate your plan, no matter how far you have progressed in your journey.

Day 2: Building a culture coalition: How do we integrate and engage with other departments, regions, suppliers, and stakeholders on our culture journey?

Having focused on building and maintaining a food safety culture on day one, the theme of day two was all about how to build a strong culture coalition with others.

A BRCGS Certificated Site Perspective

Julia Ferrell, Director of Food Security & Regulatory Compliance Corporate Quality Assurance, Bay State Milling

In her presentation Jullia outlined how her organisation uses culture champions to orchestrate the key message of their culture strategy and help ensure it continues to move forward.

She also highlighted how an effective culture coalition is all about building diverse teams that can work together towards a unified objective. This is easier when you have a mix of personnel, with different levels of responsibility who can pull all their resources to work towards that common goal. However, to be successful, it is also important for those individuals to have strong communication, collaboration and empathetic skills.

Building a Coalition Culture

Campbell Mitchell, VP Quality & Safety, Fairlife US

Campbell chose to focus on one of his company’s most successful culture improvement projects called ‘Project Trust’ with Almarai, one of the largest food companies in the Middle East.

Employing the strapline ‘quality you can trust’, Campbell highlighted how they built cross functional teams across all of Almarai’s divisions. They then integrated them under a single quality management system and came up with a motto for this new coalition called ‘in the middle of trust is us’.

Campbell was keen to stress the importance of using psychological techniques to encourage teamwork and food safety behaviour. Referencing studies such as Stanley Milgram’s ‘Pointing and Gawking Experiment’, Campbell highlighted how you can use the power of influence to get people to do certain things including better behaviours.

To further reinforce this, Campbell highlighted the importance of adhering to the right industry standards referencing AIB, GFSI, HACCP and ISO, as they all come together to support your food safety culture.

Building PepsiCo’s Food Safety and Quality Culture

Rebecca Ferrer, Sr. Manager FSQA Global Compliance PepsiCo

Using the example of what they are doing at PepsiCo, Rebecca was keen to highlight what it takes for a large organisation such as PepsiCo to build a culture coalition.

She described how utilising existing systems such as their own organisation’s value system called ‘The PepsiCo way’ can make this process easier, as you are already working within a framework that is familiar with your employees.

This subsequently led to her organisation embedding a food safety and quality culture into their wider corporate culture, culminating in the following behaviours becoming embedded into their code of conduct.

• Focus and get things done fast
• Be consumer centric
• Act as owners
• Celebrate success
• Voice opinions fearlessly
• Raise the bar on talent and diversity
• Act with integrity

With a diverse working group made up of members from across the globe, it was important for PepsiCo to have a global framework of key objectives to help keep them focused on activities that would advance their culture journey. For example, under media and communications, they have superhero branding, which works to encourage all their staff to ‘be a hero’ in terms of always doing the right thing when it comes to food safety behaviour.

Wrapping up, Rebecca was keen to stress that while the best practices that PepsiCo employs is good for them, they might not necessarily work so well somewhere else. So, it is important to find the best custom fit for your organisation.

Building A Coalition on The Culture Journey

Bongiwe Ndhlovu, Group Food Safety Manager/Manufacturing Business Partner, Tiger Brands, South Africa

Bongiwe talked about how crucial coalition building is to a culture journey, particularly when you are trying to maintain food safety across a large number of facilities and stakeholders, which also encompasses different cultures and languages. She also added how important it is to find a common ground, so we can work together to align our behaviours and move forwards towards fulfilling the same purpose.

Due to the scale of the project, Bongiwe’s organisation took a phased approach to their food safety and quality programme, which required them to split their manufacturing sites into two.

Once established, they needed to consider how they could improve their food safety and quality culture, which is where the coalition element came in, requiring them to work with their internal and external stakeholders.

There were some key enablers that really helped them move this project forward and drive them towards a place where they all spoke the same language on food safety. These included:

• Policy alignment - In a large organisation where you have many sites and manufacture many different product categories, it is important to have alignment on standards. For instance, their standard on food safety in relation to hygiene practices ensured they were all executing the same behaviours in relation to this.
• Technology integration - Technology integration was also important, as it is difficult to develop good practices when everyone is struggling with different platforms to share information. They now have a single integrated platform for sharing information and monitoring data metrics.
• Recognition programmes - Establishing a recognition programme to reward those who display the right behaviours can also be a really effective way of motivating others to behave in the right way, not just internally but for external stakeholders too.
• Education and training - Education and training were also key enablers for Bongiwe’s organisation. In particular, the importance of bringing in some stakeholders who may not necessarily be subject matter experts in food safety and quality. Incorporating them into your training plan, can enable you to impart that knowledge, awareness and responsibility into them too.

Bongiwe brought her presentation to a close by touching briefly on the themes driving the coalition of her organisation’s culture journey, which included building alignment, fostering collaboration, celebrating success and sustaining momentum.

Panel discussion

Featuring speakers Julia Ferrell, Rebecca Ferrer, Campbell Mitchell and Bongiwe Ndhlovu and Alison Wright, Director FSQA APAC, Aryzta.

In this session our panel of experts were tasked with answering a series of questions related to culture coalition building.

Given that each business group, section or department typically has different metrics or KPIs to measure their own behaviours, how have you managed to get food safety and quality metrics included into these groups, so they feel driven and feel like they are contributing to your food safety and quality efforts?

In choosing to answer this, Campbell Mitchell felt this was one of the most difficult challenges for most food companies, particularly given the many suppliers, commodities, global markets and price fluctuations they also need to think about.

Referencing the example of a procurement department, where the priority is on saving money, Campbell explained that in this scenario it is about getting them to continually think about the impact of their actions and how this might affect wider safety and quality in your business. So, in this instance, if that procurement department tried to save money on the ingredients of a particular product, they also need to consider what negative implication it could have for the overall quality of that product, which could lead to a loss of sales.

Considering events like World Safety Day, would you mind sharing with us where you get your inspiration for event activities?

Bongiwe Ndhlovu referenced that the WHO website offers some ideas on how to celebrate various themes, while internally you can establish a committee to help drive the planning process and brainstorm ideas with other people. However, it is important for the latter to be aligned with your finance teams to ensure you have the necessary budgets to support event activities.

In addition, you could look at what other organisations may have been doing and whether they have any success stories that they have shared in this space.

Adding to this Alison Wright said that besides the event and activities themselves, it is important to consider what is going to create the right atmosphere for your people and what are the important messages and education activities for them.

Rebecca Ferrer also stressed the importance of getting feedback from all your regions and teams, as different things work better for different groups. She also detailed how you can draw inspiration from looking around your organisation to see who might be doing something new and different, as well as analysing ideas from your feedback surveys.

Summing up day two’s learnings

Summing up, Dr Taylor was keen to highlight just how important events such as the Culture Excellence seminar are to those working to build and maintain a strong and positive food safety culture, not only to see what others are doing, but to avoid feeling isolated and alone on their journey.

Dr Taylor also referenced Kotter’s definition of change theory - where successful transformation is based on having an ‘accountable, diverse group bound by opportunity, strategy and action’ - as a way of encouraging delegates to empower their own culture coalitions moving forward.

Finally, picking up on some of key tips for culture coalition building that were discussed during the day, Dr Taylor was keen for attendees to take away the following actions when building a coalition for culture action plans.

• Have a purpose and maintain motivation and commitment
• Plan carefully to ensure you have sufficient resources and authority for what you need to do
• When selecting your group’s members, ensure it has sufficient diversity and inclusivity

How we can support you on your culture journey

One of the most effective ways we can support you is through our Culture Excellence Programme, which we run in partnership with Taylor Shannon International.

We developed this fantastic tool specifically for assessing, characterising, strengthening and benchmarking safety and quality culture in manufacturing, retail, food service and supporting industries. It provides clients with the data and insights they need to implement an effective improvement plan to drive and sustain the right behaviours. It can also enable you to benchmark yourself against other businesses and measure the impact and return on investment of your various activities, communications and training.

Of course, we also continue to develop and run our Culture Excellence seminars, with our next one, ‘Culture Excellence seminar – 10 year celebration’ planned for 19 June 2025, “face to face”, at Campden BRI, Chipping Campden

We look forward to seeing you all there.

How can we help you?

To discover more about what we are doing in the area of food safety culture, including useful resources and tools, visit our ‘Culture Excellence’ page.

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