The adage "There's no such thing as bad press" may work in PR, but not in food safety, where public trust is paramount.
For the food industry, there is absolutely such a thing as bad press, and it can be devastating even if the news is untrue, unsourced, unverified, and eventually debunked. But it’s especially bad if the news is linked to an actual food safety incident in your facility.
Crisis management is the art, and science, of maintaining control when a food safety incident occurs; not just how the news gets out, but how you communicate information to your internal stakeholders and regulatory agencies, how you minimize harm to consumers and staff, and how you mobilize to identify and fix the underlying issue. In short, crisis management is about ensuring the best possible outcome of a bad situation. Here are some actionable, tactical tips to prepare your team to take and keep control when things go wrong.
1. Practice food safety crisis management regularly
The most important part of crisis management training is practice. There's a reason why first responders, emergency room medical professionals, and other high-stress-high-stakes occupations drill constantly: In the event of an emergency, our brains tend to be two steps behind, but well-honed muscle memory and training can take over and help us make the correct decisions.
To make sure your team can cut through the chaos and react in a crisis, you need to drill often. It’s important to implement a combination of drills; some can be controlled classroom exercises and scheduled mock incidents, while others should include unannounced simulations to evaluate how team members might respond in a real-life incident.
You will likely want to limit the latter to just a few a year to avoid unnecessary disruption to work, but do not skip them entirely. Controlled classroom instruction is essential, but people react differently when pressure rises and adrenaline starts flowing. Without surprise simulations, it's impossible to evaluate how ready your team is to face an emergency.
2. Have a crisis management plan for every food safety situation
While some argue it's impossible to plan for every scenario, a robust crisis management team embraces comprehensive preparation. Planning for every possible emergency and incident is the second-most important tip for crisis management in food production.
It is true that building a single monumental plan to cover every possible scenario from the beginning is impractical and unrealistic. Too many variables and unknowns would slow down training too much if you tried to fill in all the blanks right from the start.
Instead, think of your crisis management plan as a living document that should grow over time. A useful mental model is a decision tree that adds branches as you think of them. Start with a simple diagram that covers the most likely scenarios based on your internal risk analysis from your HACCP planning. That should cover the majority of situations you're likely to face, but as you train on your response plan, look for branches or variables that you can add over time to cover potential problems more thoroughly:
- What if your designated FDA communications person is out?
- What happens in the event of a false positive?
- What do you do if the first indication that something is wrong is a news van at your facility?
Regularly review your plan and identify these branching paths. Over time, you will find that your plan is much more comprehensive than you initially thought it could be.
3. Food safety crisis management training is for everyone
Crisis management training shouldn't begin and end with the food safety team, managers, and supervisors. Everyone needs to have a defined role and the training to support that role. We recently published a blog post about applying the Kaizen system to lean food manufacturing. One of the key pieces that makes Kaizen work is the responsibility it places on every employee to take charge of quality. The same is true for food safety crisis management — every employee, from the newest probationary hire to the CEO, must be empowered to identify potential incidents and react to them appropriately.
Frontline production workers, in particular, must be an integral part of your crisis management training. These are the people who are closest to potential food safety incidents, and they can notice potential problems in real time that might not otherwise be caught until much later through standard QA/QC/food safety processes. Train production employees on how to recognize signs of a problem, what the proper escalation paths are, and the importance of acting immediately when they suspect an issue.
Quick Hits: Short Tips for Getting the Most Out of Food Safety Crisis Management Training
- Regularly review your crisis plan and make necessary changes to ensure it’s current.
- Clearly and explicitly define and assign roles in your food safety crisis management plan and train on them. A responder out of position doesn't solve problems; they contribute to them. Pro tip: Include a cross-functional team member to get the most out of your food safety crisis management training.
- Don't count on people remembering phone numbers. Have emergency contact information conspicuously posted or located near every phone and at every computer.
- Most people are bad at ad-libbing. Write incident response scripts and have responsible parties practice their lines regularly. Keep scripts next to emergency contact information.
- Measure and track the outcomes of drills and simulations. You can't fix bottlenecks unless you know where they're happening.
- Connect potential problems to real-world consequences. People react better when something they care about is on the line.
- Get outside help. Crisis management trainings and certifications, like AIB International’s Crisis Management Online for Food & Beverage course, can help you and your team gain fresh perspectives and challenge assumptions that might hold your crisis management plan back.
