The One Ability That Will Make You Truly Effective In Your Food Safety Job | Episode 102

In episode 102 of Don't Eat POOP! A Food Safety Podcast, Matt Regusci and I are joined by Food Safety Sanitation Professional, Elena Montoya.

She has been one of the podcast’s most loyal listeners, and if you look through Matt’s, the Don’t Eat Poop!’s, and my posts on LinkedIn, you will certainly find one of her comments, which are always very thoughtful and bring something new to the table.?

So, it’s only natural that someone as passionate about food safety and helping others become the best food safety professionals and leaders they can be as our hosts should be one of our first guests in 2025.

Get ready for some great laughs (usually Matt’s fault), Elena’s inspiring story in food safety, and ways you can become part of our welcoming and enriching Food Safety Community on LinkedIn.?

Catch up with previous episodes at Savvy Food Safety, Inc.'s Podcast Archives.

In this episode:

• ?[01:12] Meet Elena and her work as a food safety sanitation professional
• ?[04:49] The sanitation staff for a manufacturing facility versus a warehouse
• ?[07:35] How to address the pain point of staffing your sanitation department
• ?[09:21] What makes chemicals pre-approved
• ?[10:56] How Francine got Savvy Food Safety, Inc. off the ground
• ?[14:12] Why Elena chose to work in the field of sanitation
• ?[20:21] The challenge of engaging people of all education levels
• ?[21:22] The one ability that will make you truly effective in your food safety job
• [24:25] Reviewing food safety books on LinkedIn
• [32:00] What Elena wants the next decade or two to look like for her career

Connecting with and Engaging Others

“Communication is the foundation of every relationship, both personally and professionally.” – Elena Montoya on episode 102 of Don’t Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

Through his career in the auditing world, Matt met thousands of food safety professionals, and he found that the one factor that drastically affects their success within their role in a facility or farm:

• Is not based on their IQ
• Is not even based on their knowledge of food safety broadly
• Is based on their ability to communicate and tell stories

This means that it ?makes zero difference, if you are the most intelligent person in the room when it comes to food safety, if you cannot communicate that to the people who actually are executing food safety procedures on the floor or on the farm.?

Matt has encountered a lot of very smart people in this industry that know they are very smart and are extremely ineffective. To make matters worse these are usually people who come across as very condescending and just assume that everybody should just know this food safety stuff already.

The people you’re speaking to in these situations don’t care about you, and most of them don’t care about food safety either.

“?So, it's fascinating that one thing, the ability to communicate what the issue is and what the problem is into some sort of story or way at which you can relate to the person who needs to understand it is the most important, effective way of training on the floor.” – Matt Regusci on episode 102 of Don’t Eat Poop! A Food Safety Podcast

Did you know you can find fecal coliform on over 50% of gloves? ?????

It’s astounding to learn that many of the gloves coming into our country are contaminated. ?But Eagle Protect is changing that.?

They test every single lot of their Eagle Delta Zero? gloves for microbial contamination.

This is a company truly committed to food safety. So please check them out at eagleprotect.com and get your gloves tested!?

Let’s not forget… Don’t eat poop! ??

How Elena Has Been Honing This Ability (and You Can Too)

Elena knew this early on when she committed herself to her career and set out to hone her skills in public speaking, impromptu speaking, and being able to present a message clearly to effectively connect with people.

One of the things she did was join Toastmasters – a nonprofit educational organization that builds confidence and teaches public speaking skills through a worldwide network of clubs that meet online and in person.

She has been constantly using this ability in her daily work, and venturing into podcast guesting, to establish her platform and have a voice to really help spread the message of food safety.

Here are a couple of examples of how she puts what she’s learned into practice:

• When she’s having a pre-shift meeting, she makes sure to speak to people on their level so she’s able to effectively engage with them. In this situation, it doesn’t matter ?what she has to say or how important or how meaningful that is, ultimately, she needs their support and engagement. That’s why this is not the time to use a lot of statistics or industry jargon that a lot of people may not understand or connect with because you’ll start losing them. As much as we all know and have our technical and industry knowledge, it's always about being able to connect with individuals.
• She implements floor training at work. Typically, when she starts training for a new method in her floor training, she’s the one to conduct the training, and she’ll have one of her cleaners as an assistant. She has them come forward and demonstrate the methods she talks about. Once she gets them trained on that, she then likes to use the each-one-teach-one method. It’s very important for her to ?make the training light, fun, and engaging. She’ll crack jokes and tell them about some of her failures in sanitation or how she didn't know any of this when she first started. It’s really empowering for her to see people become the trainers, to see them up there and being so knowledgeable and engaging the other team members. According to her, “I think it’s really just what I live for as a leader.”

Speak to People on Their Level

As we’ve seen, speaking to people on their level is an extremely important part of communicating and connecting effectively with others. So, here are some facts to help you with this:

1. Know your audience. Are they members of the C-Suite of your company or are they working the floor?
2. There have been studies that at first said that most people read at an 8th-grade level, and more recent ones show this has diminished, and now most people read at a 6th-grade level. Understand that depending on your audience, the level you’re going for should be even lower.
3. Keep this in mind and be careful so you don’t say anything that will go right over their heads, or you’ll lose them in the conversation.

?? It’s your turn now. How do you practice your ability to communicate effectively?

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