Implementing hand hygiene behaviour change in food manufacturing according to dimensional food safety culture characteristics

Essential during food handling and production, food handler hand hygiene adherence is vital to ensure consumer health. However, embedding, maintaining and sustaining behaviour in practice can either be facilitated or hindered by prevailing food safety culture characteristics. This thesis therefore assessed hand hygiene in food manufacturing and processing environments to establish behavioural standards dimensionally informing design, co-production, implementation and evaluation of behaviour change interventions bespoke to determined business needs. A sequential mixed-method exploratory-explanatory design utilising qualitative and quantitative techniques underpinned by the Global Food Safety Initiative’s food safety culture dimensional framework and guidance enabled a holistic assessment of hand hygiene from a food safety culture perspective. Represented dimensionally, management attitudes (vision and mission), hygiene and cleanliness assessments (hazard and risk awareness), observations (people), survey (consistency) and focus group (adaptability) data were integrated in two stages ahead of behaviour change intervention and repeated measures to evaluate impact (applied food safety and hand hygiene culture). Despite the business appearing outwardly compliant a distinction between senior management (reactive) and site management (doubtful) vision and mission characteristics cascaded through all dimensions resulting in low hand hygiene compliance ahead of production entry and during food production. While improvements were made immediately post intervention, hand hygiene malpractices remained, with low and mid-level management particularly resistant to change. Duplicitous properties relating to the culture maturity stage at the business (i.e., mid-life) determined within the hierarchy, between sites and within site food production departments inhibited change which manifested in people, hazard and risk awareness and adaptability characteristics. Triangulated, real-world assessments are therefore necessary to determine prevailing food safety culture influences on hand hygiene practice with general food handler cognitive commitment a poor indicator of the same. Findings are beneficial to progress food safety culture assessment and hand hygiene behavioural research.