EHAVIOUR-BASED SYSTEMS FOR

MEASURING FOOD SAFETY

CULTURE
Many organisations are beginning to realise that despite investment in food
safety training, system implementation and auditing, something is still
missing. This ‘something’ is the assessment of their food safety culture,
which until now has been very difficult to measure.

Behaviour-based systems for measuring food safety complements the

normal risk-based, system and process checks, as it offers insight into what
employees really think and understand about food safety.

Working with our Partners Taylor Shannon International (TSI) an industry

leader in the field of food safety, management, education and
organisational culture, we have developed the BRC Global Standards
Food Safety Culture Module an assessment of food safety culture,
converting what is often a broad or blurry concept into a measurable score
and analysis which, if repeated annually, provides a baseline with which to
compare the success of ongoing investments and changes.

BRC Global Standards Food Safety Culture Excellence Module is setting

new standards for the food industry. The Culture Excellence Module is a
unique solution for the measurement, analysis and improvement of
organisational culture. FSCE will be available to be purchase directly from
BRC Global Standards via the BRC Bookshop
- www.brcbookshop.com in January 2019.

Culture is perceived as an imprecise concept and very difficult to identify.

Because of this, assessing cultural strengths and weaknesses is hard to
achieve. The BRC Global Standards Culture Excellence Module meets this
challenge; it quantifies culture in an accurate, meaningful and easy-to-
understand way. Highlighting an organisations strengths and weaknesses
enables targeted, focused improvements that were not possible before.
The BRC Global Standards Culture Excellence Module will also help to
measure the return on investment of training and other employee
development initiatives.

Culture Excellence is the result of over 15 years of academic research and

industry experience. It is used by food clients of all types including
manufacturing, retail and food service around the world to understand and
improve their food safety and quality culture.

The BRC Global Standard for Food Safety Issue 8 published in August
2018 is the first Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) - recognised global
certification programme that now requires a manufacturing site to have a
clear plan for the development and continuing improvement of a food safety
and quality culture. The Food Safety Culture Module is fully aligned and
consistent with the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) food safety culture
position paper.

THE FOOD SAFETY CULTURE EXCELLENCE

PROGRAMME WILL BE AVAILABLE TO
PURCHASE FROM THE BRC BOOKSHOP
FROM DECEMBER 2018.
The BRC Global Standards Culture Excellence Module Assessment is
based on the following structure:
THE ASSESSMENT PROCESS - 4 SIMPLE STEPS

1. PREPARATION
The assessment process starts with design and set-up. We establish how
many languages are required and make the survey available for
review. You can join a webinar with designated culture champions in which
we provide an introduction to the topic and discuss how best to
communicate and implement the assessment. Then we are ready to go!

2. ASSESSMENT
Across the company, employees receive their anonymous survey via
computers and tablets, mobile phones, or even on paper. After selecting
their preferred language, it takes around 15-20 minutes to complete. With
live tracking of completion numbers, managers can see when they reach
their minimum targets and then request for the survey to be closed when
they are happy with their uptake. Then the data is accessed and a report
can be published.

3. REPORTING
The assessment generates a lot of valuable data, and to make this easy to
manage we have created an online data platform. Developed by highly
experienced software engineers and data specialists, our platform presents
a wide variety of data views including the 20 dimensions of culture, highest
and lowest scoring questions, positives, barriers, priorities, internal
comparisons, hot-spots and bench marked against industry sectors and
employee comments.

All views can be filtered (for example by site, role or department) and
managers can be provided with access to different sub-sets of the data
based on their role. Here's a report example:

4. IMPROVEMENT
After the assessment and reporting has been completed, the experts at
TSI prepare a summary of the data and host a follow-up webinar with
culture champions from across the company. TSI look into the patterns and
trends and what this reveals, and they can support the development of
 action plans. TSI can also provide on-going support in the form of expert
webinars, articles and Q&A, to encourage discussion, sharing and
continual learning.

Some key features of the culture assessment tool are:

 Survey can be completed at any time, doesn't have to be completed during

your audit
 Complete anonymity
 Is taken by a representative sample of employees from all hierarchical
levels and sites
 Has a carefully constructed range and balance of questions
 Is designed from the psychological perspective of the ‘defended subject’ to
elicit the greatest level of relevance and honesty
 Is translated into more than 30 languages
 Has specific questions based on business sector and employee level

If you have queries about BRC Global Standards or you have any
questions, comments or requests, the BRC Technical team are here to
help. Please contact us and we’ll get back to you as quickly as possible.
For more information on the Culture Excellence programme please register
your interest - marketing@brcglobalstandards.com.
The Food Safety Culture Excellence programme will be available to
purchase in December 2018 via the BRC Bookshop
- www.brcbookshop.com

HOW TO GET THE ADDITIONAL MODULE

To arrange adding this Additional Module to your audit, or if you have any
questions and would like to discuss the Additional Module in more detail,
please contact us.

CONTACT US

WHY IS CULTURE SO IMPORTANT?

Dr Joanne Taylor, Director at Taylor Shannon International (TSI), explains
the concept of Culture Excellence and how this is applied in the Food
Safety Culture Module. She covers some of the reasons culture is so
important, as well as the many advantages companies benefit from as a
result of incorporating this assessment into their food safety programme.

THE FOOD SAFETY CULTURE

MODULE

Exclusively available for BRC Global Standards Food Safety Certificated

sites, the Food Safety Culture Module is the only GFSI scheme that can
offer such a service and provides manufacturers with insight into the culture
of their organisation.