What’s New in BRCGS Food Issue 9?
BRCGS and Food Safety Modernization Act
FSMA Preventive Controls and HARPC
Company culture is complicated, but measuring and understanding it doesn’t have to be.
By implementing the Food Safety Culture Assessment, you are taking part in an innovative and exciting program to measure what has previously been unmeasurable. More importantly, you will be gaining new insights into areas for improvement, helping you to create, maintain and demonstrate a positive Food Safety Culture.
Culture requirements are included in BRCGS Standards, and have also been more widely adopted by GFSI.
Programm summary
The benefit
The Food Safety Culture Assessment offers many benefits for manufacturers, specifiers and the wider industry. The assessment:
- Determines strengths and weaknesses in food safety capability
- Provides real insight into staff opinion, attitude, and behavior
- Provides multi-site businesses with a benchmarking tool to compare sites to each other
- Reveals the ‘unseen’ culture that goes beyond the day of audit
- Complements the existing audit program with a behavior-based approach
- Strengthens your reputation through a proactive approach to food safety culture
- Offers significant return for a low cost and hassle-free module
- Measures the impact of training, systems, and other initiatives
- Evaluates return on investment of budget and identifies the most important targets for resource allocation
- Develops supply chain awareness and supports site-specifier partnerships built on increased confidence
The process
- Preparation: Once registered, the site contact(s) will receive an email including details of how to launch the assessment.
- Assessment: Across the company, employees can complete the survey anonymously. It takes around 15-20 minutes to complete.
- Reporting: The assessment generates a lot of valuable data; this data is distilled into a PDF report.
- Improvement: Once the site has received the report and reviewed their scores, they can identify next steps for improvement.
How do I achieve a good grade in BRCGS Culture Excellence Audit?
There are four key areas that your employees will be assessed on in the BRCGS Culture Excellence Module.
1) People – the people section of Culture Excellence reflects on staff attitudes and your investment in people. Empowerment, Reinforcement, Teamwork and Training are all key metrics in this section of BRC’s Culture Excellence.
2) Process – the process section of Culture Excellence reflects on how well staff know about the importance of production processes. Control, Coordination, Consistency and Systems are all key metrics in this section of BRC’s Culture Excellence.
3) Purpose – the purpose section of Culture Excellence reflects on how your staff view the purpose of their roles within your organization, and the purpose of your organization’s work as a whole. Vision, Values, Strategy and Objectives are all key metrics in the purpose section of BRC’s Culture Excellence.
4) Proactivity – the proactivity section of Culture Excellence reflects on how your staff perceive the company to be proactive in tackling potential issues, or embracing opportunities in the food industry. Awareness, Foresight, Change and Learning are all key metrics in the proactivity section of BRC’s Culture Excellence.
