Opening the Door to a Strong Food Safety Culture

Not only is a strong culture good for employees and consumers, but for obvious reasons, it is also good for the bottom line. In fact, a Harvard study of more than 200 companies showed a strong culture increases net income by 765% over 10 years.

With the win-win-win outcomes for a company’s employees, consumers and bottom line associated with having a strong culture, why is it so hard for organizations to have the culture everyone wants to have?

It’s all about people. When it comes to culture, most companies try to apply the same classic tools for solving process or efficiency issues. They believe these tools will guide them to the enlightened culture they crave, explains author Peter Block in his book “Community: The Structure of Belonging.” Problem-solving and strategy tools like 5-Why, Plan-Do-Check-Act and Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control (DMAIC) are great tools for driving out inefficiencies. Organizations have saved millions of dollars using these tools. In some cases, organizations report more than $2 billion in savings, reports Six Sigma Daily. With cost savings like this, why wouldn’t an organization attempt to use the same tools to improve culture?

Problem-solving typically starts with collecting data. Insights into an organization’s culture can be collected through surveys and quizzes, but data alone isn’t the answer. This is evident when we consider that only 28% of executives report understanding their company’s culture, according to a study by TeamStage.

Collecting data, using problem-solving techniques and designing the best-laid strategies are missing an essential ingredient that is critical to culture — people. What many companies tend to forget is culture is about people, not strategy.

Administering quizzes and surveys to people won’t tell enough about people, thus limiting the ability to develop a strategic plan to improve culture. The starting place to improve culture is talking to people, because, as Peter Drucker said, culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Here’s why. When strategies to improve culture are handed down from on high, it’s a one-way push communication that leaves people out and, more importantly, tells them their voice doesn’t matter.

When people don’t feel valued, they aren’t engaged at work. Given Gallup reports that approximately 80% of employees aren’t engaged, a big part of the workforce is “sitting out” because they feel their voice doesn’t matter.

The problem is, with that many people “sitting out,” any organizational initiative will have difficulty succeeding, including culture change. Hence why only 15% of companies that take on culture change are successful, according to Kevin Oakes’ book “Culture Renovation: 18 Leadership Actions to Build an Unshakeable Company.”

In a world of 500 million tweets, 2 million posts on LinkedIn and 5 billion Snapchats per day, people are craving to be in the conversation. They want a conversation where they have a voice to influence what’s happening in the world and in their lives, which applies to work as well.

Companies that are willing to hear people’s voices, adapt to understanding their people and fulfill unmet employee needs are more likely to win. Deloitte reports that only 56% of employees think their company executives care about their well-being, while 91% of executives believe employees feel they care about them. The gap between what executives believe employees need and what employees actually need is only widening. It’s not rocket science to learn what people want. Employees simply need to be invited into the conversation.

Opening up the conversation. That leads to the first question, who needs to invite people to have conversations? Managers. Gallup shows 70% of the variation in employee engagement is due to the manager. As John Maxwell said, “a good leader always includes others,” and that needs to extend to all people. People with individual perspectives, such as different roles, functions, experiences, education, race, gender and orientation, enhance cultural conversations. Changing culture, and subcomponents like food safety culture, takes intentional effort from all, especially managers.

Next, how do managers intentionally engage in new conversations to align with a new culture when human brains are wired to have the same conversations over and over again? This is what takes intentional action. Having new conversations takes mental and emotional energy. And making new conversations seems hard, but putting in the effort to have them is worth it. With the right tools, a bit of practice and reflection, managers (or anyone) can have new conversations in no time that will positively shift the culture.

1. Listen. No, really listen. Salesforce reports that employees who feel heard are 4.6 times more likely to be motivated to do their best. Oprah’s famous quote on what people want most is, “Do you see me? Do you hear me? Does what I say matter?” Put down the electronics. Step away from work and distractions. Focus only on this person with the intent to hear the meaning of their words. When you truly listen, you will seek to understand instead of waiting for your turn to talk, as Steven Covey said in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” Listen to understand unmet needs that keep team members from being able to fully engage at work.

2. Notice your words. Imagine this: Edwin shows up to the meeting five minutes after it’s started. He’s greeted with “you’re late” or “glad you could finally make it.” These statements ooze with judgment and are pointedly personal. These statements inherently tell Edwin he’s done something “bad.” See how this starts the interaction with negativity? That type of negativity closes conversations. Instead, what if he was greeted with “we’re glad you’re here” or “welcome”? A slight shift in words has a monumental shift in meaning and impact. When words have unspoken demands, like judgments about people’s behaviors, the conversation is about power over the other person. Judith and Ike Lasater, authors of “What We Say Matters,” challenge people to use open conversations that are about having power with each other to express needs, empathy and truth instead of a culture of blame.

3. Pay attention to the environment. Consider this: a manager wants to gather their people to have a heartfelt conversation about their needs. The manager follows the same playbook used for every other meeting and simply sends an invite with a standard agenda for an hour the following week. How does this tell the team to expect anything different than what they always experience? Having different conversations also means setting the stage differently. Think how the heartfelt meeting about needs could be different if the manager verbally let employees know ahead of time, prepared a special outline and asked them to bring a personal memento that brought them joy to share with the group. Now the manager has set the stage for a new conversation.

Developing new behaviors. These tools are straightforward. None of these tools and approaches are new, yet they continually top the lists of “how to improve engagement” or “how to improve culture.” Why is that?

According to psychiatrist Aaron Beck, humans fall prey to our thought cycles, where we think, feel and do the same patterns over and over. The same behaviors, feelings and thoughts continue without intervention in the cycle. It takes active and consistent work to interrupt the thought cycle that drives how we listen, what words we use and how we set the stage for effective conversations.

Managers must develop an awareness of how they listen, the words they use and how they create a safe space for conversations in order to invite people into the conversation. Cultivating this self-awareness can be done, but leaders often think they’ve got it, when they really don’t.

Psychologist Tasha Eurich’s research shows that 95% of people believe they are self-aware, but only 10-15% truly are. Organizations can support managers in developing human skills such as self-awareness to improve conversations, but they should be careful with how they do this.

Traditional training programs will teach managers what to do, but training itself doesn’t often change behavior. That’s confirmed by the 24X7 survey that found only 12% of learners say they apply skills directly to their jobs.

Instead of training to give people information, a cycle of practice, reflecting and reinforcing new behaviors is needed to translate information to action. It takes many passes through the new neural pathway to have the human brain recognize there’s a new preferred route. Carving out new neural pathways is hard work. It’s like guiding a trickle of water that likes to spread out to take the same path to create a new trench.

Coaching. Coaching is a powerful tool to support those new behaviors and dig the new trenches. It encourages self-learning, introspection and self-correction that inspire new behaviors, so managers are confident and prepared for new conversations.

Even knowing training isn’t effective, it will be tempting to “train” people to have new conversations because that’s the norm, and people are uncertain of coaching. Managers may think coaching takes too much energy, is too much talking or is too much like therapy, according to Gallup survey data. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Take it from Ted Lasso. He shows powerful coaching and how it can happen in the little moments. To set the stage, Ted Lasso is an American football coach who is traveling to England to be a soccer coach. It’s probably a good thing Ted knows nothing about soccer, or he’d probably turn into an “advice monster,” a term coined by author Michael Bungay Stanier to describe the default mode of most humans.

Rarely does Ted tell his unruly, eccentric team and staff what to do to be a better soccer team. Instead, his limited expertise forces him into asking powerful questions, making observations and engaging in new ways with the people around him. The powerful questions he poses make people pause and think about their own behavior so they can decide to either continue on that path or change paths. Essentially, Ted doesn’t provide advice, mentor or act as boss. Instead, he invites people to have new conversations. Spoiler alert: by having new conversations, Ted creates an engaged, loving, kind and successful team.

Contrary to belief, coaching isn’t just for executive leaders to drive performance. Coaching is about developing people. It’s a worthy investment with a proven rate of return of at least 5.7%, according to International Coaching Federation Global studies, to shift managers into better leaders to have new conversations that guide the new culture of community and ownership that drive food safety culture.

Create a culture shift. Improvements in food safety cultures start with people. Managers must be more intentional in how they work with, talk with and invite people to be part of conversations and the larger community. This task asks managers to lean into new conversations to engage people differently to understand their needs and how their gifts contribute to the greater good. This is what creates a culture shift.

Tia Glave and Jill Stuber are co-founders of the technical leadership development and food safety consulting group Catalyst, LLC.