Webinar Recording | 29/01/26

[Kristy]

Hi everyone

For those who weren’t able to join us live for our recent STC & QTC webinar, the full recording is now available to watch. We had a great session with lots of useful insights, discussions and questions from attendees. Thank you to everyone who joined us and took part! If you missed it, you can catch up using the recording above.

We will also be posting all of the unanswered Q&A questions below shortly, so keep an eye on this thread.

If you have any further questions after watching, feel free to add them here too!

Thanks again for your support and we hope you enjoy the replay

 

[Kristy]

Q: Have you ever audited a site with an excellent culture and a strong commitment to product safety, yet still struggled to meet formal compliance requirements during an audit? How did you approach the audit?

 

[Kristy]

Q:

What practical exercises or activities can businesses with limited financial resources use to genuinely build and demonstrate a positive food safety culture in the workplace?

 

[Kristy]

Q: Does NC in other clauses - in terms of resources not provided adequately to maintain food safety account as evidence of NC for 1.1?

 

[Kristy]

Q:

Hi Oskar and Cathy, One thing which auditors are trained to do for 1.1.2 to support objectivity in the way they audit, as much as possible, is to look out for 4 particular things at the site: initial assessment (identification of strengths and weaknesses), action plan documented, implementation started, annual reviews. Any thoughts or advice for the sites on this as it is not explicitely written in the clause?

 

[Kristy]

Q:

Does Section 1 require senior management to be physically involved during audits, or can commitment be effectively demonstrated through day-to-day behaviours and systems in smaller businesses?

 

[Cathy Gladwin]

Hi everyone

For those who weren’t able to join us live for our recent STC & QTC webinar, the full recording is now available to watch. We had a great session with lots of useful insights, discussions and questions from attendees. Thank you to everyone who joined us and took part! If you missed it, you can catch up using the recording above.

We will also be posting all of the unanswered Q&A questions below shortly, so keep an eye on this thread.

If you have any further questions after watching, feel free to add them here too!

Thanks again for your support and we hope you enjoy the replay

Fantastic, thanks @Kristy !

 

[Cathy Gladwin]

Q: Have you ever audited a site with an excellent culture and a strong commitment to product safety, yet still struggled to meet formal compliance requirements during an audit? How did you approach the audit?

I've been there and I’m sure many of our readers have too. You walk into a site and you can just feel that the team is great and genuinely committed to safety, but then things don't quite line up on paper with the formal BRCGS requirements.

• I look at the intention behind a clause rather than just the exact wording. If a production team is relaxed, well-resourced, and clearly cares about what they're doing, it gives me confidence they've met the real goal of the standard, even if the documentation is thin. I've just got to be careful as to whether it's an NC or not. I use the rest of the audit as the real assessment of the culture in the business.

At the end of the day, an audit is about truly assessing the business. If they have a great culture then that’s fantastic, but the job is to make sure that culture is backed up by a system that holds everyone accountable.

 

[Cathy Gladwin]

Q:

Hi Oskar and Cathy, One thing which auditors are trained to do for 1.1.2 to support objectivity in the way they audit, as much as possible, is to look out for 4 particular things at the site: initial assessment (identification of strengths and weaknesses), action plan documented, implementation started, annual reviews. Any thoughts or advice for the sites on this as it is not explicitely written in the clause?

Ah yes, this was a great question!

To summarise what we discussed in the webinar - this is a really common issue because I often find sites think their staff survey IS the culture plan. So what follows here is my response to the concern about what "is not explicitely written in the clause" and that is the " initial assessment (identification of strengths and weaknesses)". But the questionnaire / survey is really just the research and clause 1.1.2 doesn't ask for the research, it's looking for the plan that follows the research.

The actual plan should be separate activities based on that research, like ongoing communication specifically focused on product safety. Many sites use the questionnaire / survey AS the communication when that wasn't the intention of the clause. The same applies to the bullet point for staff feedback.

I find the rest of the clause is nicely detailed regarding the 4 points that BRCGS detail in their training slides for auditors (ref the original question), but just to wrap up, a common NC is where the actions were not SMART (measureable with timescales per clause), and as a result, the site has usually not been able to measure success of the actions.

 

[Cathy Gladwin]

Q:

Does Section 1 require senior management to be physically involved during audits, or can commitment be effectively demonstrated through day-to-day behaviours and systems in smaller businesses?

Not all senior managers have to be physically there the whole time since some of them have other tasks such as finance to handle. However, for roles present day-to-day, especially in production, auditors want to see them active in the audit and speaking for themselves rather than leaving everything to the technical / quality manager.

BRCGS really emphaise this point in training of auditors. We really can't be lazy about it, even though it can take a real effort to ensure that we speak with other managers. Commitment is effectively demonstrated through those managers' support of the audit, but also of course, their behaviours and whether staff feel comfortable and supported by those managers, rather than being overly stressed.

 

[Oskar STC & QTC]

Q:

What practical exercises or activities can businesses with limited financial resources use to genuinely build and demonstrate a positive food safety culture in the workplace?

Great question and this is what people usually think - that to have a good culture we need money, but building a positive food safety culture doesn’t require money, it requires time. Simple, low-cost activities include regular toolbox talks on real site issues (e.g. pest control, root cause analysis), short in-house workshops, and managers spending time on the shop floor coaching and mentoring staff. Open communication is key, whether through team huddles, noticeboards, or regular one-to-one check-ins where employees are asked how they feel, what support they need, and whether anything makes food safety harder to follow. Involving shop-floor teams in discussions and decisions, rather than limiting this to management, is what genuinely demonstrates a positive food safety culture.

 

[Oskar STC & QTC]

Q: Does NC in other clauses - in terms of resources not provided adequately to maintain food safety account as evidence of NC for 1.1?

This is a hard one, non-conformances raised in other clauses (e.g. lack of resources, staffing, training, maintenance) are not automatically evidence of a non-conformance to clause 1.1. Those issues should normally be raised against the specific clauses they relate to. However, repeated or systemic resource-related NCs may be used as supporting evidence that senior management is not providing adequate resources or oversight, and therefore may indicate a weakness in clause 1.1. It is always context-dependent and based on patterns and management response, not isolated findings.

 

[Cathy Gladwin]

This is a hard one, non-conformances raised in other clauses (e.g. lack of resources, staffing, training, maintenance) are not automatically evidence of a non-conformance to clause 1.1. Those issues should normally be raised against the specific clauses they relate to. However, repeated or systemic resource-related NCs may be used as supporting evidence that senior management is not providing adequate resources or oversight, and therefore may indicate a weakness in clause 1.1. It is always context-dependent and based on patterns and management response, not isolated findings.

Yes, totally agree @Oskar STC & QTC
Again, there's that auditor discretion we talked about in the webinar - it's very much a judgement call isn't it. It's rare to see a major NC in 1.1 related to commitment from senior managers - but saying that, we must bear in mind that although it's rare and auditors are hesitant to raise serious NCs for something as difficult to evidence as "lack of commitment", that's mainly because it's the root cause to the symptom - the symptom being the issue the NC was raised for in the first place.

As a result:
1. The auditor is now weary - they're suspecting "lack of commitment" but since it's more the root cause, the NC goes to the most relevant clause just as Oskar stated.
2. Since they are weary, know that they are now "looking harder" for risk in the business, which is quite right to do.

And to close the loop on this line of thinking, the site themselves should not hesitate to identify the root cause (where is is lack of SMT commitment) and address it through value adding CAPA actions. It's not easy to have those kinds of conversations, I know But it can be greatly beneficial in growing a professional business.