Adaptive Challenges in Food Safety

There are many challenges to building a food safety culture: time, money, training, etc. Many times food safety professionals look at problems in black and white. We all know that dock doors need to be closed, we know it's for food defense and pest control. I'm also willing to bet most if not all of your team members can also, answer that question. That is a technical challenge "closing a door". But then why do you find so many doors open? That is the adaptive challenge, finding the why team members still leave a door open to spite their knowledge and training. Finding the why this is happening, is key to building on effective food safety culture.

So where do you start? I suggest reviewing Schein’s Theory of culture. It's the most commonly used theory to study food safety culture. The pieces that practitioners need to take a close look are underlying assumptions and beliefs of your team members. That will be a great place to start looking for solutions to your adaptive challenges.

What are some things you are trying to do at your facility to build stronger food safety cultures? This is an important to your food safety management program because your food safety culture is a key indicator of your risk level of causing a food safety issue. Leave a comment on something you are doing now to improve your organizations food safety culture!