Case Study: OSI
OSI is a global food supplier, where customer and consumer trust is built on a long-standing reputation of producing and supplying safe, high-quality food products. With a company mindset of being “the brand behind the brands”, Sharon Birkett, Vice President Global QA Operations, explains that, "it is a real honour to have customers trust us with their most precious asset - their brand". For a global organisation that operates in 18 countries and territories, aligning OSI values with team members across facilities and job levels can be challenging. With a diverse workforce comprising various ethnic cultures and backgrounds present within each facility, OSI utilizes food safety campaigns as one of many approaches to facilitate culture communication and awareness.
OSI has worked with Culture Excellence since 2017 assessing their food safety culture across the company’s 57 global locations. OSI uses a number of great initiatives to promote food safety culture in a diverse environment.
Food Safety Always
As an organisation, OSI believes in ‘Food Safety Always’ with three simple behaviors: Look Out, Speak Up, and Act Now. Not only are team members at OSI encouraged to look out for themselves, these actions also extend to others, with an expectation to always be proactive in identifying food safety risks. Staff are inspired to expect excellence and never be complacent and, if concerns are raised, action is taken immediately.
Food Safety Week Campaign
Communicating OSI’s values across the organisation is given an additional boost during their cross-organisation ‘Food Safety Week’. Held in annually September, 53 locations participated in 2021 with 95 percent of the company locations sharing culture content such as pictures, videos, and supporting documents. Food Safety Week raises and reinforces awareness around OSI’s ‘Food Safety Always’ campaign, which seeks to instill food safety culture in the hearts and minds of every team member. Over 1,500 hours of preparation (including development of a leader ‘toolkit’) and more than 2,000 hours were dedicated to activities during Food Safety Week, which was supported by executive champions across the organization who enabled, empowered, and encouraged participation. Culture ambassadors were appointed in different geographical and functional areas who communicated with site champions, and, in turn, interacted with site leaders to ensure an effective roll-out.
Advice around a successful Food Safety week from OSI:
Do:
Get senior management involvement demonstrating top-down leadership.
Be creative with your content – why not plan a fun food safety scavenger hunt?
Take the opportunity to align your communication with your organisation’s values.
Focus on simple activities that drive engagement and communication. Everything from pledge cards employees can place on walls, to email signatures, to food safety time capsules.
Teamwork! Conduct activities for groups where everyone gets a chance to explain their role in food safety.
Allow for customization. Different sites will have different needs, and a good campaign will reflect that.
Don’t:
Don't neglect the challenge of managing activities around operations. Some activities will be difficult to conduct when team members have duties that take them away.
Don't forget cultural/linguistic differences. Inclusivity is key!
Celebrate your wins!
The success of Food Safety Week was demonstrated in team members (new and old) becoming more aware of the efforts OSI takes to continuously produce safe food and increasing familiarity with the underpinning values surrounding Look Out, Speak Up, Act Now. Sharon noted that, "Undoubtedly, being able to customise the activities to suit sites was highly beneficial. This not only ensured that the messages being communicated were consistent across the organisation, but also helped engage team members with OSI’s values, many of whom continue to use the toolkits regularly."
Reference: OSI Food Safety Week, 2021. More highlights can be found here.