Safe Food Production: How to Set Cleaners Up for Success  

Mikkel Svold (00:08):

Hello, and welcome to Behind Clean Lines, the podcast where we slowly but steadily uncover what it takes to be part of a future with safe food production. Now, today we are once again joined by the good, Dr. Thomas Buehler from Ecolab, a sustainability leader offering water and hygienic solutions, infection prevention solutions for the food industry. Welcome to you, or welcome back.

Thomas Buehler (00:36): Thank you. Happy to be back to discuss more topics.

Mikkel Svold (00:41): Now, Thomas, we call this episode, How to Set Cleaners Up for Success. This is a very tangible title I think, but I'm curious why are the cleaners someone we need to focus on?

Thomas Buehler (00:57): Yeah. Cleaners do a manual job. They are operating a tight ship. They are, I would say, they are the weakest element in the chain, the weakest link in the chain when it comes to a good hygiene outcome and maintaining the hygiene level at a stage where the plant can actually produce safe food, in good quality, day in, day out. So, they actually are vital in getting it done. Why it's difficult, because we have varying shifts, we have different people. Sometimes we have language barriers. We have people that are not really educated on the job. All this mix makes it more difficult to convey the message why it's important and what to do to do it right. Yeah. There is a bit of a barrier sometimes.

Mikkel Svold (02:00): Now, you said that the cleaners are typically the weakest link, and this is of course because of the things you just mentioned, the language, the potential language barriers, the education level. But is that also because the cleaners are not prioritized enough? Or is there something else you also mean by weakest link? Does it mean something else?

Thomas Buehler (02:22): It's the people management that needs to be taken into account here. It's managing these people, managing their expectations. Their motivation. Typically, if a human being is generally motivated to do something, he does it with a certain intent. But you need to keep that motivation. Of course you can also generate frustration. So, this is something that needs to be really taken into account to make it successful. Not to only engage people, find people, all that is very difficult, I know. But it's getting and keeping them engaged in a way that they can be successful.

Mikkel Svold (03:09): Now, just to get everyone on the same page, can you try and describe, what does a cleaning personnel's work look like? What are the work environments? I know they work often at night, but what does that entail more than that?

Thomas Buehler (03:21): Yeah. It's night shifts, it's work under wet conditions with cleaning chemicals, with awkward positions. Sometimes might be difficult to access the equipment, so they need to balance across other equipment to get there. All this can make it very hard for them to be successful and be efficient. There's time pressure. Often the areas are not well lit to see residues and to identify what they're doing, so it's a rush job sometimes, and then the outcome is also not as it should be.

Mikkel Svold (04:18): Now, concerning the equipment and the layout of a factory, what are the typical pitfalls that you hear from cleaners?

Thomas Buehler (04:29): What you see is typically layout of equipment is not really done with the intention to clean. So, I think we have mentioned already hygienic design, this is usually done on a small element, but you need to think bigger. You need to think of building your factory in a hygienic way, so that all parts that need to be cleaned can be cleaned in a way that people can access the area. Otherwise, you will just spray somewhere, the spray and the splatter ends up at another place instead of making sure that it's built in a way that it can be cleaned. That can be quickly cleaned, that it can be safely cleaned, and that people can do their job in an effective way.

Mikkel Svold (05:25): I'm thinking about the people you employ as cleaners, of course you have your full-time employee staff that come every night, and that's a good thing. But this to me also seems like an area where you would see a lot of substitutes. You would probably also see a lot of temporary employees or short-term employees. How do you go about keeping the quality of the cleaning high enough?

Thomas Buehler (05:53): It's often also contractors. I would say in general it's about setting clear targets. It's giving defined operating procedures in how something needs to be cleaned, provide the right cleaning tools.

Mikkel Svold (06:13): Is this a problem you've met out there?

Thomas Buehler (06:15): It's still a problem in areas, that you have tools that are not adequate, that have not been maintained, have not been repaired. If that is happening, then it's bound to fail. So, if that is the case, then you have cross contamination, you have these carryovers from one place to another. People need to pull in hoses from one side of the factory to another side of the factory, across the floor, with dragging all the contaminants from one area to another area. This is not uncommon and it happens easily. A third element I would say is very important, is setting the right goals. So, let everybody know and communicate what you want to achieve, in terms of the cleaning outcome and also how this was met. So, it's goal setting and achievement in the end, that helps to have everybody focus on this. Then of course it needs to be cascaded.

Mikkel Svold (07:31): You say you measure the cleaning outcome. That to me seems like a hard metric to measure. How would you do that?

Thomas Buehler (07:40): I mean, there's different tools to do, and we also use different tools. We also help our customers to give new ideas on what tools work well and don't work well under situations directly after the cleaning, or more or less at the end of the production shift. So, you can actually establish different solutions. We use, for example, UV light, because what you see is immediately visible if you have reflections of organics, of biofilm for example. This is something very strong that people can buy in, understand where is the problem, where is the hygiene gap, and make it visible. So, the normal torch already helps a lot to spot the problem zones, but if you have UV light, that even helps more. Then you can go into details, use the usual swabs, rapid swabs, or also microbial swabs to identify and actually establish standards and also set the scene, set the results, establish and measure what has been achieved.

Mikkel Svold (09:05): I'm just thinking, the UV lights, it always sounds a little bit high-tech when I hear UV lights, but in practicality that could easily just be, go down to your local fishing store and then buy one of those UV lights that you can find, you use when you're fishing or whatever. You can find them as a torch, and it's so inexpensive.

Thomas Buehler (09:26): Yes. No, I would say you need to use the right wavelength, and that's not so trivial. So, you need to be able to also see this during daylight, otherwise it's not that effective. If you only see it at night when it's pitch black, then it's not going to help you a lot. I would be careful on just buying one down the store, from the internet. That's not what you should do. In this case, it's good to have some advice, and we also give you advice on this one, what works, what doesn't work, what's easily visible, and what also helps you to interpret the reflections. You might have different colors coming back, and to know what you're seeing, you shouldn't overreact as well.

Mikkel Svold (10:18): Okay.

Thomas Buehler (10:18): This is another aspect in this. You need to gauge your results against the degree of risk. What is the highest risk? Certainly it's areas that are directly in contact with food, and then it's areas that might actually have contact with food, because they are above the food surfaces. Like any pipes, any condensation that could drip down on the surface, any air that comes in the airflow is very important. But also any dust that could probably fall down from a staircase directly onto a food contact surface could be devastating.

Mikkel Svold (11:07): Yes, of course. So, that means no extra business for Amazon on UV torches right now. I'm sorry about that, Amazon. But if we come back to making to the title basically, how can we make the life easier for the cleaners? Can we do some kind of checklist for heads of production out there that they should check off?

Thomas Buehler (11:33): Yeah. I think they need to lead by example. I think I mentioned it in the other interview already. They need to lead by example, because people quickly gauge if this is serious or not. Like with worker safety, if you mean it, you also need to execute it, and you need to it top down. You need to have your benchmarks in place, and you also need to show the benchmarks. You need to talk about it. You need to talk with your team, your, let's say, day-in, day out team, your 100% employees. But also you need to communicate the message to the contractors. They also need to understand that you are measuring against a target, and you also need to show and exchange the target with them.

(12:23): Then I think what should not be underestimated is the environmental monitoring, because if you are testing, you shouldn't test for clean, you should test for finding something. You should try to identify problem solves. So, being very, let's say, sturdy, very intensive on trying the hygiene part important in a factory is really key. That comes top down. It needs time, it needs people. The resources need to be there. It costs downtime, like maintenance cost downtime. You need to make sure that you are replacing seals in closed systems, for example. Those are aspects that play a role here.

Mikkel Svold (13:17): Yeah. You mentioned this communication, and we talked about it just before turning on the microphones, the communication between the cleaners and the management. We were talking about this, that the management is on the top of the hierarchy, and in some cases the cleaners are, well, pretty close to the bottom of the hierarchy, so there can be some discrepancy between what is set down here at the people actually meeting the problems every day, and what management listens to. Can you try and elaborate that a little bit?

Thomas Buehler (13:50): Yeah. I think there's this barrier between the different levels. It's the time gap, it's the communicational gap. This is very important to understand. I think you would need to use posters and let's say black and white storytelling and communication on the results, that make it easier for these elements to be communicated. Understanding this, I think it's food safety culture. In the end, it's what you want to achieve in the factory, that everybody is engaged on the topic and feels entitled to work, and let's say also speak out about food safety culture issues. So, you need to have that very clear communication line in easy words. Sometimes not even in words. It could be just numbers, and people understand numbers typically, so it's not lost in translation. This way, I think you would get the message trickle down eventually. Of course it's a repetitive act, it's not done with one training. You need to do it regularly, you need to continue on this topic and stay focused and intensive on it.

Mikkel Svold (15:23): You mentioned the time gap, and I'm thinking that must be the fact that management and middle management as well is usually working in daytime, where you have nighttime shifts, night shift for the cleaning personnel. Will that solve it, just having, you said numbers, and having, I guess, screens also showing.

Thomas Buehler (15:47): Typically on both sides. You have managers, people managers, and they need to communicate the results. There's another time gap beyond the day/night. It's also the microbial results typically come in later. So, there is an additional delay, which means that it's even more important that you communicate the results, that you write them down, and that you show them in trending reports, like you do trending reports For worker safety. You would need to do trending reports for food safety, and give the necessary insight at least to the people manager on the cleaning team, to make them aware of where are the trouble spots, what do you need to care for most? This way you can make it effective.

Mikkel Svold (16:41): I'm thinking it must also be creating a culture of the cleaning staff communicating upwards, not just the other way around. Is that true?

Thomas Buehler (16:51): Correct. Yes. It's the same on the operators level, on the processing team operators, they also need to be able to communicate up. Make it easy for them to communicate up and establish ways and standards to communicate up. Because that's part of the engagement, it's part of keeping the motivation of people. If they're not, they shut their mouth and they will probably not mention anything. That's a degree of disengagement already established in the company. So, it's engagement that is counting here. With many other aspects, food safety is not any different.

Mikkel Svold (17:34): I think, let those be the last words, Thomas. Dr. Thomas Buehler, once again, thank you so much for joining. It's been a real pleasure. Of course, to all your listeners out there, if you have any questions or if you have topics for future episodes, maybe you have someone you think we need to talk to, just please reach out to us. You can find us at the email address podcast@ngi-global.com. That was podcast@ngi-global.com. Okay. That's it for now. Thank you so much for listening.

Thomas Buehler (18:07): Thank you.