Building Culture with Tia Glave

Dr. Darin Detwiler: Hello! Welcome to another episode of Trust Bites, presented by My Trusted Source, the solution to build trust throughout today's global food supply chain. I'm Dr. Darin Detwiler, and in these next episodes, we'll be diving into deep discussion with our advisory board. I'm really happy to introduce one such board member, Tia Glave. Welcome. Tia Glave: Hello, thank you for having me. Dr. Darin Detwiler: Thank you for spending some time with us here. Do me a favor, will you? For those who have never had an opportunity to see you speak or to work with you, tell us just a little bit about yourself. Tia Glave: Yes. Hello, everyone. I am Tia Glave, and I have been in the food industry for a little over a decade, supporting large manufacturing, small companies, medium sized companies, entrepreneur companies. Anything you can think about in the food industry, I have supported them. I have worked in many different categories from baked goods, dairy, pasta, to baby food. And now I am a co-founder of an organization called Catalyst, where we help organizations prioritize the wellbeing of their people by empowering their technical experts to step into leadership roles. Dr. Darin Detwiler: And I happen to know that you also work with diverse populations. Correct me if I'm wrong, you're the founder of Black Professionals in Food Safety and Quality. Tia Glave: I am. Dr. Darin Detwiler: And I have to admit, I've had some great opportunities. This is kind of like full transparency here. I've had the opportunity to share the stage with you and, and to co write with you and collaborate with you at many occasions and, you know, one theme that really starts to come out is that, you know, we have to look at our leadership culture and our workforce culture but also our quote unquote food safety culture. We have to start prioritizing that. We have to start really making sure that we build that as a foundation. Because it's hard to really expect it to happen accidentally. We have to put some effort into this. So let's talk about that. What are some key elements that you see in terms of, a strong food safety culture? And let's intersect this idea with diversity and inclusion if we could. Tia Glave: So when you think about food safety culture, you know, I like to have people break it down, right? The food safety is the technical aspect, right? Like, as members of an organization that's working on strengthening their food safety culture and we all should be doing that. You know, every year we should have something around food safety culture where we're trying to better our culture specifically around food safety. And so the food safety part of that is the technical. How are you strengthening those technical skills? How are you making sure you understand food safety? Or regulatory? Or all of those different parts that kind of goes under the umbrella of food safety. Culture is people. How are you developing your people? How are you making sure that your people have a voice? How are you prioritizing what they need? And our employee needs change. And so, right now, when we look at data that's out there around what do employees need, they really need their organizations to prioritize their wellbeing. And so, that's what we should be doing around culture. How are we prioritizing their wellbeing according to what they need? And that might be, you know, someone that might be struggling with shelter. Or someone that might be struggling with healthcare, or, you know, someone that might be struggling with childcare. they are looking for organizations that protect that well being. And so when we look at food safety culture, we should be looking at how does our people understand food safety? And what goes into that and how their roles impact food safety? And then how are we making sure that they feel like they belong and that they are being taken care of while they are protecting our consumers through food safety? And so when you look at that and start thinking about diversity and inclusion, Think about your workforce and how diverse they are. And then I want you to think about how diverse your consumers are, and who do you want buying your products. And when you think about that, it's important to incorporate those viewpoints and attributes of those populations into your culture, because that represents the people. And so what I sometimes see is that leadership doesn't necessarily represent the people that are making the product, right, as in the facility. Or all voices are not being brought to the table to talk about action of the organization or what's next or even, you know, what kind of benefits are we going to have as an organization? That could be even rewards, right? Like what type of rewards do you want to give to people? How do you want to recognize people? All of those thoughts should be a part of what direction we're going in. And so what I find is that some people are left out of the group and therefore they feel like they're not a part of the culture. And if you feel like you're not a part of the culture, you either, A) you don't participate, so that means they're not participating in food safety culture, or they create their own counterculture where they are getting what they need, but it might be going against what the organization is trying to do. And what you see in those situations is that food safety culture isn't as strong as the organization wants to be. And it's because they're leaving out that culture piece, that people piece. And when you think about diversity and inclusion, making sure that people are included, making sure you have a diverse group of people with different backgrounds sitting at the table so you can have a true representation on what your culture is today and where you want it to go. Dr. Darin Detwiler: You know, when we talk about concepts such as trust and validation, a lot of ideas come to mind, whether you're talking about, like, sustainable development goals, social responsibility, even ESG. When we look at foods, if we want a strong food safety culture, I also think of cultures as stacked plates, if you will. You have to have a people culture. Tia Glave: Yeah. Dr. Darin Detwiler: Right? And then you have a food culture and then you have a food safety culture. Tia Glave: Mm. Dr. Darin Detwiler: And then you have your corporate food safety culture. And if there's gaps in any of those levels, it's hard to have a solid foundation at a higher level, your own specific facility in this location, you know, safety culture there, if you don't have a solid foundation of those, those plates of culture, if you will, below them. And there are certain things that sometimes don't sound like food safety that I've started to think erode our ability to trust a food safety culture. For instance, we looked during the pandemic at the idea of essential workers and the safety of our workers. And if our workers can't feel safe, then how can we expect them to be focusing on our food safety, you know, for consumers? And some other issues have come up lately, you know, looking at minors, you know, underage teenagers working in hazardous conditions and sanitation or in meat plants and, you know, working too many hours and, and not even supposed to be working with that equipment or those chemicals at that age. You look at the idea of unsafe warehouses where it's overridden with rodents, yeah. You look at an example, for instance, where here was a food safety violation, but if you kind of pull the curtain back a little bit, you'll find some other ESG red flags that were there. So it seems to me like you start looking at culture in terms of, of it's a much bigger concept than just safety culture at any one plant or facility, because all these other layers of culture can support, or undermine your ultimate goal. Tia Glave: Yes. It's all connected. It's all connected. And everything that we do, everything that we say as leaders, that is impacting your culture. Food safety culture, people culture, safety culture, all of the cultures, right? It is impacting, and this is such a great and important point, Darin, because sometimes we forget. Sometimes we're like, "okay, food safety culture. So we're going to talk about everything in food safety." And then we wonder like, well, why is it not working? Why is the dial not moving? And it's because there's lack of trust in other areas, right? Like, if you see an organization, like, let's use the example of underage labor, right? Illegal underage labor. If you have an organization that has all the, you know, pamphlets up and all the posters and they're sharing information about consumer complaints and they're diving into root cause and they're doing all this great stuff around food safety, but people at the facility see that the organization is breaking the law around who they hire, that trust is gone. So people start to say, "Oh, well, the organization is just doing this part for show. Because I know they're doing the wrong thing in the other areas." Right. And you know, that's an example that, the organization may or may not have known about. Right. I want to point out that even when you don't know about these things, like, you don't know something is happening in your organization, but other people do, or even if it's a perception, right, like, those things erode trust and therefore it impacts our culture, whether it has anything to do with food safety or not. And that's why I like to break up food safety and culture because they both are contributing to the overall food safety culture. So, you know, I really liked this example that you brought up because people do not think about that. Leaders do not think about that. It could be the type of jokes that you see, right? Like, that can impact culture, where people are like, I don't really like the joke that's coming out of Tia's mouth, right? Like, I don't really trust her. And then it starts. I don't really trust the culture, right? Just because, say I'm a top leader in an organization, right? It starts to trickle to all parts of culture because they are all super connected. And that's what makes culture hard, right? At Catalyst, we help organizations develop a strategy around their culture and help drive culture forward. And that's the hard part, is really understanding how to impact culture across all of their facilities, across their corporate locations. How do you keep an ear out in those places, right? Might be having conversations that you're not really a part of. How do you make sure that your managers, your middle managers, especially because they are, in my opinion and Cal's opinion, they are the true drivers of culture. How do you make sure that you are protecting them and prioritizing their wellbeing so that they have the time and the energy to figure out what's happening in the corners of the facility where those conversations are happening that actually shaping your culture? That has a greater impact than your mission or your vision or your values or competencies as written down in the facility. What matters are those conversations. So you have to figure out how to get in there, because if those conversations are happening, and I'm not saying conversations about food safety, any conversations, could start to impact your culture. And like we've been talking about, that's all connected. Dr. Darin Detwiler: As you've been talking, I was having a hard time not having these memory flashes. Remember all those, like, Undercover Boss TV shows? Tia Glave: Oh, yeah. I love that show. Dr. Darin Detwiler: It seems to me like the big message to take away from that is that, here a boss or a senior level owner would go undercover. In almost every case it was about finding that there was a disconnect between what they believe the culture was and what they experienced the culture to be. When they went out to that, whether it was a restaurant, store, Tia Glave: Yeah, Dr. Darin Detwiler: it was that they went to, every episode seems to be like, yeah, there's a disconnect between the perceived and the reality of the culture. Tia Glave: And you can find in the, in the same show, right? Like if you're looking at a restaurant. One restaurant will be booming, right? And they have embodied everything that you as the CEO have talked about and continued to voice throughout. And then you run into another manager. It could be in the same restaurant or a different restaurant, right? And they are the complete opposite, right? But it's important that you are in tune with both of those people, right? Because they both are influential in your organization. And that show is actually really interesting when you look at it from a culture perspective, which I do. I do love that show. Dr. Darin Detwiler: but you know, that's still very corporate. If we were to flip the script a little bit, there's still the culture of the consumer. Because retail and restaurant would be nothing without their customer. How can consumers perhaps influence the culture to make sure that it is true to what they're advertising, what's on the label or the nature of the brand, even to the point of saying, look, we act as if we vote with our food money and we want to invest, if you will? Right. Into smaller suppliers, minority, local, smaller owned businesses, things of that nature. We want you to do business with these types of entities, not necessarily saving a little money by going from, you know, outsourcing or going from outside the country or whatever. So how can consumers play a role in this? You know, again, we talked about like the undercover boss, but what about the consumer? What, what can consumers do? Tia Glave: Yeah. You know what? Consumers have the most power that they've ever had right now. And the reason is because of social media and the internet. You know, obviously you can vote with your dollars, right? But posting something on social media, right, like, this is what keeps our marketing people, our top leadership, up at night is: if there's an incident on social media. You know, I'm a part of these travel Facebook groups. I have a toddler. And so I'm in these groups that's talking about traveling with toddlers and infants, and sometimes people have issues with a corporation. Almost always the number one thing people are saying is: tag them on social media. You will get a response there. We've had these traditional avenues of, like, calling corporations, right. And if you are in a corporation that has the means to have these customer service and being able to trend and monitor your consumer complaints, you get that data as a food safety professional. I've reviewed plenty of consumer contacts whether it's questions or praise or complaint. And that does help shape what we do. But from a consumer standpoint, social media has been just something huge that has impacted, not just the food industry, but all industries. And so I would say, like, even as an organization, as you're looking at, like, you know, how do you build that trust with consumers? That is the avenue right now. How do you connect with them in a space that consumers are connecting? And I truly believe, just even personally, that organizations should be doing that. Because there are people out there right now that's connecting with consumers, talking about food safety, that just do not have the expertise and they're giving false information. And so we, as an organization that has the resources, that cares about their brand, that want to build that trust, we have to start doing some of that work, too. We have to start introducing ourselves and building that trust from a social media, internet standpoint, because that's where consumers go and get their information. They crowdsource, almost. And so if we can be a part of that conversation, I think that's the way that consumers are looking for things. And so we have to meet them where they are. And then we all know, like, if we break that trust, that's exactly where it's going to land, right? It's going to land on social media and then that's going to be the conversations. Dr. Darin Detwiler: Well, it's also important to remind our audience that, when you look at your pool of applicants, your pool of hires, your pool from which your workforce comes. They come from the consumer pool. Tia Glave: Absolutely. Dr. Darin Detwiler: Everyone who works in the food industry is still in the category of consumer, right? It's not like there's consumers and then there's this other breed of people or something like that, right? So, if you want to have a strong food safety culture, realize that if your consumer culture is one thing that's perhaps different than your workforce consumer culture, excuse me. You know, I've had companies talk about how you know, younger employees provide an age barrier to understanding about hand washing or understanding about cross contamination or things like that. And it's like, well, if you reached out to your consumers, if you were more transparent or more connected via technology to the consumer of the culture of your consumers, perhaps that would help impact the culture of your employees. I was recently talking with a small restaurant that is part of a chain and I just, you know, sat down and said, Hey, I watched your employee clock in, didn't wash his hands, went over to the drive thru window, took some orders with the headset, went over, swept the floor a little bit, and then went over to prepare some sandwich by hand. Never once washing his hands. And the manager was like, wow, yeah, I've seen that before, but you know, what can we do? We get these people that come in, they make this much money, they don't care about this. And, you know, we talked to leadership and leadership doesn't really do much kind of a thing. And there is a culture problem there with this restaurant. It's one thing to start talking about wages and leadership. It's another thing about, well, what if your workforce doesn't understand the true burden of disease, the likelihood and severity of certain issues, even the idea of the optics of doing these things. If you don't take time to make sure they understand this, you're preventing them from embracing a bigger food safety culture. Tia Glave: When you hear someone, a manager or someone else say, well, they really, they don't care, I know something's missing. 'Cause most people care about what they do. In anything that they do. I've actually never met someone that I've worked with in food that did not care. Now, they might feel like their leaderships don't care, or they might feel like that they don't have the right tools, or they might, there's other things preventing them from doing their role correctly, but I've never met someone that did not care. So, typically, if I'm talking with a manager, and I'm like, you know, hey, what's kind of going on here, and they're like, oh, well, the people just don't care. I always ask them to dig deeper. What's actually going on, you know? And then the second thing that kind of comes up to my mind as you're telling this story, and I was just having this conversation with someone a couple of days ago, is that you'll know what type of culture you have based on what your culture rejects. So in this particular situation, this culture probably wasn't great. Because it did not reject the person that wasn't following handwashing and handling practices, right? Safe handwashing and handling practices. So the culture didn't reject this person, right? It let them be, it let them continue to go on. But in a great culture, someone would have already said, Hey, clocked in, you haven't washed your hands yet, make sure you wash your hands before. Because that's what we do every time we come on ship. And then if that person is not doing those things, then they will actually be rejected from the culture. Hey, it doesn't seem like you're fitting in well. Is there anything you need to help with hand washing? Otherwise, if you can't get on board, you can't work here with us. And the reverse is true. If you are in a poor culture and someone comes in and they're always washing their hands and they're always doing safe practices, you will start to get rejected. Hey, you're moving too slow. You can't do that because you really got to get to these orders. So the culture will start to push that person out and reject that person, even though they have good or even great qualities of what a culture should be. That's one thing that I like to look at, what is the culture rejecting? What is the culture happy with? Even if everyone's kind of like yeah, we know it's not the right thing, people don't care here. If the culture is still embracing that, then that's what type of culture you have. And so at that situation, you know, I really would dig in deep, from a manager standpoint on like, what do you feel like you can tackle because you really actually don't need your leadership to make sure that people are washing hands in your space. I've been there where a leader is not necessarily on board with food safety. I'm like, well, this is what you're gonna do, right? Because I need my culture to reject that person, even if they are leadership. You don't need leaders really to manage your culture there, because you can go up to the person and say, hey, you didn't wash your hands, right? Make sure you wash your hands every time you clock in to work. You can do that without anyone else telling you to do that. Dr. Darin Detwiler: You shouldn't have to have the corporate visitor or the outside observer there. Oh, now we have to pretend like we, we, Tia Glave: Right. Exactly. Dr. Darin Detwiler: culture is supposed to be, it's as if that whole, you know, you should be living up to the expectations of that culture, even if no one's watching. And at the same time, you brought up the idea of talking with your other employees. you and I both travel and we've traveled accidentally, we've traveled together. We've run into each other at the airports and you can't help but not see that whole, if you see something, say something. Well, that's an interesting culture to try to inspire, but if you're a culture where you say, see something, however, if you speak up, face ridicule or retribution or no consequences, you're probably not going to speak up. Tia Glave: Right. Exactly. Exactly. Dr. Darin Detwiler: So you have to really kind of put your money where your mouth is in terms of what your culture is. It has to be consistent. It has to be encouraged. It has to be validated, celebrated. It's not easy and it's going to be something that you can't flip a switch and have the culture you want without really having put the work into it, to build it over time and to then maintain it. Tia Glave: Mm hmm. Absolutely. Absolutely. And as leaders, we have to be able to speak, right? I really think about our middle managers because we like to talk about that middle manager squeeze where middle managers are in this spot that they are trying to execute someone else's vision. So someone else is saying, Hey, you must do this. And then you're also working with other people that's like, nah, I really don't want to do this, you know? So you're trying to influence them and empower them. And so you feel like you're literally being squeezed from both sides of the organization. Dr. Darin Detwiler: Stuck in a Venn diagram. Tia Glave: Exactly, right? And that's so tough to do. But really as an organization, you want to make sure that you empower those middle managers to have that time to have those conversations with people. And so you can actually speak up, right? If a middle manager or even let's, let's think about like plant leadership, right? If someone from corporate comes down, they're here to visit the plant and this VP is walking around the floor with no hairnet, that leadership team should be the first to say, Hey, you forgot your hairnet. Here you go, right? So that even people in the facility will see you be able to correct. And to even say, hey, I let Tia know that she forgot her hairnet. She went and she put on her hairnet right away. That is something I need you all to do if someone walks on the floor. It doesn't matter if they're a VP. It doesn't matter if it's the CEO. If they've forgotten their hairnet, us humans do, right? Make sure you speak up just like I have. And take those moments, right, to reinforce the culture you want to see. You know, I've definitely forgotten a hairnet before. I've actually forgotten my safety shoes on the floor. In a group! And you know, one of my friends that was in maintenance was like, he came over and he was like, Tia, like, look at your shoes. And I'm like, oh no. And literally I left, you know, and put on my shoes and came back, but imagine if no one said anything to me about that. I would've just been walking around with the wrong shoes, but even more extreme, imagine if something had happened from a safety standpoint and my toes had gotten broken, right? Like, then I'm like, oh, no one told me about this. It was honestly an honest mistake. We need people to speak up that way because we're human and we have a million things on our mind. But taking those moments to reinforce like, yeah, you know, if you see someone, if you see me as your leader walking around with, I forgot to take out my earrings, please let me know. That's how I know you care about me, but that you also care about this culture and reinforcing the type of culture we want to have. Dr. Darin Detwiler: Last week I was being shown a new science lab at, at a university. I won't name the university or even what state it's in. And you know, through the windows they were showing how up to date the equipment was. But all the students and they're wearing their safety goggles and hair nets and, and lab coat and, and I've noticed that one student was literally in flip flops, Tia Glave: Yeah. Dr. Darin Detwiler: And the person was like, well, I'll make sure to have a talk with that student. And I said, you should have a talk with the professor, because why is the professor allowing that student to take all those safety precautions? And there's a sign right there, you must wear closed toe shoes. And yet that guy's standing there in flip flops. As much as we could say that the newest employee is not above the food safety culture, the most senior employee, I don't care if it's the owner, quite honestly is above that same culture. And unfortunately we've seen that in the last few years where, the highest office of the land, here's a person walking into a hospital or a facility and not partaking in the obvious safety culture of that environment. That's poor reflection of not just that individual, but those people who allowed that to take place. Tia Glave: Right. Exactly. Dr. Darin Detwiler: They should know better. Tia Glave: Absolutely. That's a big thing. I've worked with a handful of owners and CEOs and as they're trying to help with their food safety culture, one thing that I talk to them about is that you have to follow the rules and if you need to write yourself a reminder every time you go to a facility, like, it is really important, especially right now as we're trying to change the culture, that you are fully immersed in doing everything. Because people are looking at you. And it's hard to change, right? I always say culture shift is like a cruise ship trying to turn. It is slow. It's hard. Things have to move out of the way. You might hit something and it's like that. And one little thing can cause it to go off course. You do not want it to be you because the more power it seems you have in the organization or the more influence you have in the organization, then the harder the chip, the little chip away at culture, the bigger that chip is. And so you have to make sure that if you're in a position of influence that you are making sure that you are on it every single time you are in front of people, because that is so important for your culture. Now, it doesn't mean that you can't mess up, right? Like, and people do. Like I said, I've forgotten my hairnet. I've forgotten my safety shoes. It's about having those conversations afterwards, right? So like, having those conversations of, I forgot my safety shoes, please make sure you take a look at your shoes before you walk through their door. Do a check. Now I do a check every time I go, right? And share those learnings with people. So people would know that you're human, right? And that you too make mistakes. And that two, if you do make a mistake that we still welcome you here, right? We want you to learn from it and it's okay to make those mistakes. And see that you can correct them and live this life of what type of culture we want to be. And that's when you start seeing people get on board. I'm like, yeah, I'm not afraid to make a mistake. If I do, I can talk about it without a negative... You know, consequences around it. And that's when you start seeing the culture come together, right? Because it's really building that trust, right? People now trust me because they know I'm okay with mistakes and I share my own mistakes and my own learnings to help other people that's building that trust in those relationships. Dr. Darin Detwiler: Well, Tia, thank you for talking with us about this. Seems like whether we're talking about a food safety culture or any culture, Tia Glave: hmm. Dr. Darin Detwiler: find examples of where it's being used as an excuse, or it's being leveraged as a tool to really bring about trust and food safety. We could probably say the same thing about technology, whether it's technology like monitoring or reminders or things of that nature, it could be leveraged to support our food safety culture. But at the same time, technology, even social media, can be used not only to support, but also to point out flaws and point out areas where some more work needs to be done. So there's a lot more conversations we could have about culture and about diversity in our workforce. But I think ultimately, we need to embrace this as if we're not doing this taking into consideration culture and diversity of our workforce, then how can we actually have a workforce? How can we actually have food safety culture if it's devoid of that? Tia Glave: Absolutely. Yeah, and I love the example that you gave where like, you know, people that work in the food industry we're also consumers and there's many times where, you know, I might be job searching and I see a role come up and I would love to have that role, but it's at an organization that I'm like, no, I know they don't have the food safety culture that I want to be in or the culture that I want to be in. So you're absolutely right from a consumer and workforce standpoint. We're all we're one of the same. Dr. Darin Detwiler: Tia, this has been a great conversation about food safety culture and about diversity and even technology. Really appreciate that. And from everyone here at My Trusted Source, thank you for watching another episode of Trust Bites. Tia Glave: Thank you.