Here in the UAE Abela & Co. is synonymous with high quality food service management and are leaders in their field. Abela & Co. works with clients in a vast field of industries – be it oil & gas, F&B retail management or banqueting & outdoor events – and produce an impressive 120.000 meals every day. Needless to say, food safety is paramount in keeping such a successful operation going and with that in mind the company has been participating in our Culture Excellence program since it’s launch in 2015.
While at the Dubai International Food Safety Conference, we kindly asked Abela & Co. represented by their Food Safety Manager Raseena P.T to share their experiences using the assessment tool and what benefits they have noted along the way.
Raseena mentioned 3 key learnings from using the Culture Excellence assessment:
- A quantification of Abela & Co. ’s achievements and efforts in food safety
As we always say, what you cannot measure you cannot change! Using the Culture Excellence assessment tool allows companies to create a culture language that isn’t based on concepts but concrete numbers everyone can understand and relate to.
- The increased maturity of company culture over time
Since Abela & Co. has been doing the assessment for a number of years, they have also been able to see how their efforts and initiatives taken to improve food safety culture have affected it across board.
- Differences depending on employee level
Culture isn’t just what management is telling its employees – if the message isn’t received or respected by the lowest ranking members of staff, it will affect your culture negatively. And how best can you target the various groups in your organisation if you don’t have data to what they’re really thinking and doing? Abela & Co. were able to see the differences from managers to supervisors to operators and pinpoint the groups to work with for continuous improvement, ensuring a strong and good food safety culture across the entire organisation.
Of course, receiving a large volume of data about your culture is great. But. What does one do with all that data? Abela & Co. did what we always encourage our clients to do to get the most benefit from the assessment: implement data driven strategies in focus areas. At Abela & Co. , this meant focusing on the following:
- Using the data for internal analysis and communication
- Developing focused action plans
- Talking about culture in facts and figures
- Using the data to drive improvement
It has thus been no surprise that Abela & Co. ’s scores improved significantly after the first year, and that the company is continuing onwards their journey of excellence.
Thank you Abela & Co. & Co and Raseena for sharing it all with us!