Case Study: Hilton Foods

Bespoke improvement actions are key to success. One size doesn’t necessarily fit all!

Formed in 1994 Hilton Foods analyse food trends globally to gather inspiration and create or translate winning formulas for new markets. Our approach to developing new products and solutions stems from one thing: what consumers love. Hilton Foods have recently rebranded with five new pillars; meat, seafood, vegetarian/vegan, easier meals and supply chain services.

Hilton Foods are on a food safety and quality culture journey, with their first benchmarking survey carried out with Culture Excellence in 2019. Based on these results, quality champions were appointed at each site in 2020. They second survey was undertaken in 2021 and the first Food Safety Week was hosted the same year.

Zoe Shaw-Mason, Group Quality Manager, shares the Bespoke Solutions for Different Sites

SOHI Meat Solutions (Portugal)

A game has been developed based on the Champions League to monitor and reward adherence to food safety and quality key performance indicators (KPIs). Each site department created their own logo to represent their “team”. Tennis balls are awarded to each department for each KPI that is achieved, there is also the chance to win extra balls for unannounced internal audits – the department with the most balls wins a reward. This promote a healthy competition between department and also encourages compliance within each department. 

Alongside the “Champions League” monthly food safety posters have been implemented alongside focussed training which is targeted to areas which have been identified as weaker i.e. an increase in non-conformances relating to foreign body control would trigger a foreign body training refresher. 

Hilton Foods (Denmark)

This site implemented a dashboard that specifically looks at key food safety data and makes it easier for colleagues to access this information and establish an open dialogue to determine the true root cause of issues. An overall “One Team” approach has been adopted to encourage teamwork, which is an area that was identified for improvement within the Culture Excellence survey for this site. This also includes promoting a culture of inclusion and openness with particular regard to quality related training. 

Hilton Foods’ next steps are rolled out the third Quality Culture survey in January 2023 and utilised these results to determine the next steps of site improvement plans. In an exciting phase of expansion, there is also a need to establish the baseline culture at newly acquired sites. Whilst the company is a few years into their journey, there will be learnings to share. However, as Zoe described; what works for one site, may not work for all. 

Reference: Campden BRI (2022), Culture Excellence 8th Annual Seminar