Like most professionals, I like to stay informed about what is happening in my field, which for me includes food service, retail, and hospitality industries. It amazes me when I read stories of companies failing inspections, or worse, being responsible for a foodborne illness incident that negatively impacts their brand. What is even more interesting is the minimal number of times that leadership publicly responds to inspection failures or instances.

It’s Not the Time to Look for Excuses

In a recent case involving a food producer, OSHA inspectors found several violations in their production facility, and in a second follow-up visit, OSHA found additional violations. In this particular case, the organization accepted $100,000 in penalties, signed the enhanced safety compliance agreement, and took full responsibility for the issues. Unfortunately, leadership assuming full responsibility for violations is not as common as one would think. In fact, they often deflect to other leaders in their organization or make excuses to avoid acknowledging that they weren’t in compliance.

Another example is of a recent string of restaurant incidents in Miami that its management made the decision to shut their restaurants down to take corrective action. Management, in this particular case, took responsibility without giving excuses. They stated, “We have rigorous health and safety policies and procedures in place that were not adhered to. There is no excuse for this, and we have retrained our management and staff to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”  Although this organization’s management stated they have “policies and procedures in place,” one would have to wonder what, if any, control mechanism they have in place to prevent these incidents from happening again.

Responsible Corrections

When significant issues or a non-compliant incident occurs within your organization, your team and the public will look at how you respond. If they see you taking full responsibility and providing an action plan to prevent future violations, the public will continue to support you. Taking responsibility is only one action needed in tough times, having full visibility of the situation and the appropriate data to put corrective measures in place is equally critical.

Understanding the “How?” of any incident and possessing enough details to determine if the situation was isolated or an ongoing problem will help you mitigate the impact of the situation and quickly restore your reputation and protect your brand. Whether you have multiple OSHA violations, are the cause of a foodborne illness event, or worse, it’s vital to engage as a trusted leader and ensure you have all of the information needed for an appropriate response strategy.

Below are a few key items to consider when incidents do happen:

1. Complete visibility: While there is a critical balance between being 100% transparent and ensuring the protection of your brand, being open about what happened, and presenting factual data about the incident, is necessary. Shareholders, customers, and employees will react accordingly to how you respond and your level of openness about what happened.
2. Be like Sherlock: Don’t make assumptions, make sure you gather as many data points as possible, and be prepared for your responses. You should have processes, standards, and systems in place before an incident happens, and be ready to modify them if something does. Seek out the experts to get their insight. Their expertise is critical to knowing how you should respond to the incident and what strategies are implemented to correct the problems.
3. Internal importance: Keeping your internal team updated about how you plan to respond to incidents is just as important as how you respond publicly. Your team will continue to look for your leadership and guidance. Regular updates keep everyone in sync, preventing rumors and other information from leaking out.
4. No finger pointing: Although one would assume that this is a given, the reality is it continues to happen. Pointing fingers and blame only aggravates the situation and can diminish your credibility as a leader both internally and externally.
5. Having a breadcrumb trail: My philosophy tends to lean heavily on preventing situations from happening, but you cannot avoid all incidents. I firmly advocate having systems in place to track the actions you took before events occur, during and after. This breadcrumb trail gives you an advantage in being at the top of your game before and if an incident or violation occurs.

Putting Everything on the Line and Online

How does a brand build confidence with their customers? By putting everything out and in the public and online. A famous Columbus, Ohio burger chain did exactly that by publishing its health inspection scores online. To quote one of the Vice Presidents of the burger chain, “This information we have, information our customers are interested in, why not make it easier for them to explore it”. This approach is bold and we applaud the organization for being pioneers in transparency. Why shouldn’t customers have easy access to health and safety information about the places they eat or about the places they stay?

No one wants to be responsible for safety or quality infractions, but if it happens, you’ll want to be confident that your teams are ready for action and that your reputation will be protected with RizePoint compliance management software. No more excuses!