Food Safety Meetings
Hey all,
I am nailing down a meeting schedule to get everyone on board with a set date and time to meet regularly and go over new topics and section reviews. How often does everyone meet with their groups and for how long?
Cheers!
I can't pick one radio button as we have 2 different meetings types
Senior management HACCP meetings are monthly for 1 hour for 2 sites--we discuss repeated deviations, issues that may require capitol, audit and analysis results--really high level stuff
Weekly meetings inter department meeting for 45 minutes where all issues are discussed
For my money-- issues should be dealt with as they occur, meetings would be for high level discussion (repeated issues, forth coming audits, changes to the food safety plan)
Much time can be wasted in meetings, they need to be concise with an agenda that promotes flow and communication otherwise they turn into b***h sessions and everyone walks away feeling defeated
How often are sections of the plan reviewed? Do you take a section each meeting and just work it out so that the whole process is reviewed by the end of the year/cycle?
My former company has monthly senior management/food safety meetings. They typically lasted about 15-30 minutes.
Mu current company, I've been here just over 2 months and there has been 1 pre-USDC audit meeting that lasted about an hour, and 1 plant safety meeting that lasted about 10 minutes.
They are seriously lacking meetings.
Miss Frankie,
How big of a team do you have vs the number of company employees? I want to have stakeholders from each level but don't know if I should be shooting for a percentage of the company or just someone from each department.
Cheers!
Miss Frankie,
How big of a team do you have vs the number of company employees? I want to have stakeholders from each level but don't know if I should be shooting for a percentage of the company or just someone from each department.
Cheers!
Both companies are under 100 employees total.
Teams sizes are about the same. Having had only 1 at the new company, I don't think everyone was present, there were 5 present. Former company typically had 4-6 present.
Thanks for the feedback. I hope this thread keeps going. Looks like the trend is monthly for an hour. I wonder how that holds up with more poll takers. Thanks everyone!
Cheers!
The facility I was at most recently held quality review meetings monthly, which I chaired. The site operated tot he BRCGS Food standard, which largely set the agenda. I don't think any of these meetings took less than an hour and it would have been pretty unusual for a meeting to exceed 2 hours, but we pretty much allowed the meetings to go on until we had sufficiently addressed every agenda item
I will say the majority of the senior management team was positively oriented toward quality and safety - so there was pretty good buy-in and support. If there was ever a sentiment that the meetings were taking too long, we'd just say that was good evidence of our food safety and quality culture - which normally put everyone back on the right track.
I would say it also depends on the risk and dynamic of your company.
I am used to weekly QA meetings with the plant/production, and either monthly or bi-weekly meetings with management.
I just started a new job in which there has been a bit of a turn over and expansion of the QA team and we are just settling in on our regular meeting schedule.
I am thinking about minimum quarterly HACCP meetings, for large issue's and changes, and bi-weekly QA site meetings, for small updates and exchange of information.
Besides that we have a weekly call with just our QA folks.
We have weekly meetings lasting between 1-2 hours, for a site I work 2.5 days a week at... so really we meet every 2.5 days, sometimes for 2 hours...
NOT FUN
Anyone doing multi-site? I imagine there would be a monthly meeting for each site and then a meeting scheduled to get each site on board? Anyone doing that?
Cheers!
Anyone doing multi-site? I imagine there would be a monthly meeting for each site and then a meeting scheduled to get each site on board? Anyone doing that?
Cheers!
I have done multisite.
Would do either a weekly or bi-weekly meeting with the operation/QA/QC and a monthly meeting with higher management.
Must also say that I am a fan of frequent meetings, feel like it keeps the attention on QA and improvement which otherwise can fall to the background.
Anyone doing multi-site? I imagine there would be a monthly meeting for each site and then a meeting scheduled to get each site on board? Anyone doing that?
Cheers!
We have multi-site and we have quarterly meetings for each site.
I'm at a smaller site (36 total employees, and I'm 1 of 2 from the senior management "team"). We conduct weekly team meetings where we cover production, shipping/receiving, quality, our anonymous comment/report box, and food safety/HACCP. They're about 30 minutes long, and are attended by the 2 production room supervisors, warehouse supervisor, office manager, and 2 senior managers (our HACCP/HARPC team). The senior management team (duo?) meets quarterly to review complaints, KPI's, food safety culture, etc. more in-depth, and that also is about 30-45 minutes.
It seems like the meetings are short, but we're a smaller operation, so sometimes there isn't much to review or discuss.
Hi All,
For me it would depend on the status of the food safety management system.
For established systems, routine regular review 1 hour monthly.
For developing systems and when there are changes and ongoing projects, weekly 1 to 2 hours.
Kind regards,
Tony
I don't set a time limit to the meetings unless requested. We're all there to discuss and address issues. Sometimes the solutions are straight forward, and sometimes it's a heated debate. What's important is the people who needs to be there are there.
It depends on various factors like risk associated, strictness of the system implemented, product criticality, number of lines, number of people, how the process controls are managed, etc. In case the system is fresh not matured, you may require weekly meetings. Mostly the food safety issues are also discussed in daily meetings. If the system is matured enough, communication within team is very strong, then team may have meeting once in month.
Even BRC requirements mentions about meeting at least once in month.
Regards,
I work at a large company and our food safety team meets monthly for about 45 mins to an hour and includes the head of almost every department....so QA, operations, maintenance, warehouse...etc etc. Whoever is in charge of a department that has an impact on food safety. We have a set meeting register that we go over every month - KPIs, sanitation results, food safety incidents, and the likes.
We (management) meet monthly for 15-20 mins, and the entire team meets annually for about an hour. We are a small company.
Our management team meets daily for 15-30 minutes, but it's not solely for food safety/quality. I run a monthly 1 hour 'management review' for food safety with high level info and to go over the GMP audits.
The daily meeting is great though to nip things in the bud as they come up.
We meet once a week for as long as we need, monthly HACCP meeting, and monthly full joint meeting. Around Christmas time we do the management review, etc, so we have a big fat long meeting for that one...