Focusing on frontline team members is critical for improving the food safety culture of an organization. This includes tapping into their collective experience around procedures and products, ensuring effective two-way communication with their middle managers and senior leaders, making sure food safety remains top of mind, and providing everyone with the meaningful recognition that we all require for driving change. Engaging with frontline team members is particularly powerful because they are the ones who make food safety decisions and put them into action in real time.
A proven tool to improve frontline employee engagement and education is the concept of "nudging." In this context, nudging is any aspect of the choice architecture (ways in which choices are presented) that alters human behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.1 Nudging is not asking employees to respond to questions from management teams (sometimes dressed up as "asking for feedback"). True nudging separates the questions from the hierarchy.