The use of rewards and recognition can help individuals and teams develop a sense of personal responsibility and understand their role in maintaining your company’s food safety standards.
A strong sense of personal responsibility can encourage employees to demonstrate positive food safety actions. These rewards can also assist leadership with developing and enforcing desired food safety behaviors across the entire company.
The following considerations have been useful to Alliance members as they developed their own rewards and recognition programs and may provide guidance as you plan, implement, and evaluate your own.
Consider the nature of the rewards and recognition programs.
Take into account the regional and cultural norms of your team as you design the specifics of your rewards and recognition program.
For example: your self-reflection process may reveal a challenge to your food safety culture is a lack of teamwork and communication. Your rewards and recognition program could encourage teams to submit ideas collectively for food safety improvements. Ideas would be reviewed and recognized, and teams would have more opportunities to work collectively and a chance to communicate their ideas in a direct and formal way.
Some rewards or systems of recognitions may or may not apply to your organization or your employees. Cultural norms are not universal, even among facilities of the same company.
Think about the needs, wants, and cultural norms of your team. What rewards and forms of recognition will they most respond to?
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