Three Things You Can Do Today to Empower Your People and Improve Food Safety

By Alex Hanley

When was the last time you took a walk through your facility and had a simple conversation with someone on the floor? And we don’t mean a rush trip to tell someone something or ask them a pointed question. We mean a walk with no agenda other than a conversation with someone with no preset topic.

Has it been so long ago you can’t remember?

Employee engagement is a hot topic these days, and empowering everybody in the plant is crucial for ensuring the safety and quality of your products.

Here are three things you can do today to get started and better engage your food safety employees.

Engage in Regular Communication

Prioritize having meaningful conversations with your team members. Group or team conversations work perfectly well for many purposes. However, you can learn even more from one-on-one conversations.

I once heard the owner of a large North American food company with multiple sites say, “When I do a plant visit, I get a lot of information in the boardroom, but I never leave without having a visit on the floor. I do that with such predictability they expect me to come. You can tell a lot about what’s really going on in a facility by spending 20 minutes with the production manager and an operator or two.”

Empowering everybody in the plant is crucial for ensuring the safety and quality of your products.

Making the time to be deliberate about engaging in open and honest dialogue helps you to understand employee perspectives and concerns, and they often make suggestions, which makes them feel that they have a say and their contribution has great value to your organization. Your first step is as easy as creating a list of employees to talk to. Then, commit to making an effort to have a one-on-one discussion with each of them within a specific time period. Cover all areas including maintenance, sanitation, forklift drivers, and line operators.

Then, tackle them one by one – and keep it up. If someone has concerns but feels a roadblock to being heard by their own boss, they will tuck it away for their next opportunity with you. Or if it’s urgent and you’ve made them feel safe, they will come to you.

Practice Active Listening

When having these one-on-one conversations, actively listen to what the individual has to say. Give them your full attention and demonstrate that their input is valued.

Encourage them to openly share their thoughts and concerns without fear of reprisal. Actively listening to their experiences and insights can help identify potential food safety issues. You want to hear this!

Tips for active listening:

• Pay attention for real: Clear your mind before the conversation and be prepared to let the talk go where it must. Look at the speaker directly. Resist the urge to immediately add to their words or offer a rebuttal. Nodding to get them to continue is great. Avoid being distracted. Pay attention to body language. A head down or fidgeting hands can tell you a lot about how hard it might be for a person to speak up.

• Show that you’re listening: Use your own body language. Relax, smile slightly, and nod in the affirmative to encourage them to keep going. Resist the frown or the raised eyebrow. Use small audio responses such as “go on” and “tell me more.” The key is to keep the employee talking.

• Provide feedback: As humans, we are hard-wired to layer our own filter onto what we hear. Our own assumptions, judgments, and past experiences creep in. You can circumvent this by asking questions to layer on what we hear from the speaker. This gives you a moment to reflect. Examples include, “Let me repeat to you what I think you’re saying because it’s important that I get it right. Feel free to correct me.” Or “What I think you are saying is…” This makes the other person feel heard and ensures the information is anchored in your mind. Also, ask for clarity if you think you might be feeling attacked or challenged. It’s easy to say, “What I think I heard is … is that what you meant to say?” This gives you a moment to check your own feelings and can avoid a misunderstanding.

• Don’t interrupt. It’s counterproductive to everything we just said. Resist!

• Respond respectfully and appropriately. Thank the individual for being open, honest … and brave if they’ve just spoken truth to power. If what they told you is a big deal to them, treat it like a big deal to you. You’ve gained valuable information and perspective. Show your appreciation whether what you heard was good or bad news for you.

Take Action and Provide Feedback 

Take the information you’ve gathered and analyze it to identify opportunities for improvement in food safety protocols and procedures. Sometimes, small, actionable changes based on solid feedback can significantly enhance food safety within the plant. Of course, monitor and assess the impact of these changes to ensure they are effective. If the change required is a big one, tackle it step-by-step with your overall team. 

Regardless of your decision, let the individual know you have taken what you heard and acted upon it, and if you have not taken action that warrants an explanation. 

This way you ensure your people will continue to provide you with important feedback. People who feel heard speak up more often. A speak-up culture is what you want in your facility because you are never going to have your eyes and ears everywhere at once. You need other people to be those eyes and ears and to let you know how it’s going. 

By adopting these practices, you’ll empower your food safety team and foster a culture of collaboration, continuous improvement, and commitment to maintaining high food safety standards in your plant. You’ll identify and address potential issues more proactively and efficiently, ultimately benefiting your team, the safety of your products and, ultimately, your customers. 

So today, carve out 15 minutes and have one conversation. Practice active listening and commit to following up. Rinse and repeat. 

About the author:

Alex Hanley, CEO of Navigate Food Safety, is a food safety expert with over two decades in the food industry, most of those as a food safety auditor. He has a deep understanding of food safety management systems and certification and has performed more than 1,000 HACCP quality systems, and food safety audits covering multiple categories, in addition to traveling the world designing, implementing, and auditing best practices for manufacturers of every scale.