The Big Myth about Employee Safety in Food Manufacturing

At PacMoore we strive to create a workplace that employees can come to every day and feel safe, valued and needed. My part in this goal is to ensure employee safety. It’s not an easy thing to accomplish, but it is critical to who we are as a company.

  • employee safety food contract manufacturingMYTH: In order to achieve production efficiency, you must sacrifice an amount of employee safety.
  • THE TRUTH: When approached properly, employee safety complements production efficiency rather than impairing it.
 Achieve Production Goals While Protecting Employees

Food manufacturing companies like PacMoore all have many challenges in common.  In addition to producing food products that are safe for the general public, we must invest what is necessary to provide a safe work environment for our employees. It is also critical that we work efficiently in order to find ways to meet our obligations on time and with the agreed-upon specifications.  Trying to achieve a balance between production efficiency and safety will often fail to achieve the required performance in either, because a balance between two priorities often requires a decrease in one for an increase in the other. The faulty assumption here is that personnel safety and company productivity are mutually exclusive – as the balancing exercise demonstrates – when in fact they have proven to complement and not compete against each other when approached properly.

Employee Safety is the Foundation

When we internalize the belief that personnel safety stands alone it is never compromised, never cut short, and never made a lesser priority than any other effort. The result is that employees recognize that their employer values them for much more than their contribution to the company’s bottom line. They begin to see that the time, attention, and investment made for their personal health and well-being is a stand-alone tenet of their employer. The foundation for their relationship with the company is their value as individuals and as human beings. This is how we define a strong Safety Culture at PacMoore, and it can only develop with a consistent approach over time that does not waver. When employees experience working for a company that values them highly as individuals, there are no limits to the extent of their contributions or what the company can achieve. The company that never balances safety with its other priorities recognizes that valuing employees above all else is an investment that will accrue to its highest accomplishments. This is the firm and steady foundation at PacMoore that is unshifting even amongst changing priorities.


Much of the content of this blog has been re-purposed from a blog previously published on our site here.

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Chris Bekermeier

Vice President, Marketing and Legal Affairs

Chris’ experience with Scott Paper and ConAgra has allowed him to sell and manage leading brands such as Scottissue®, Viva® Towels, Healthy Choice® and Butterball®. He received his B.S. in business management from Eastern Illinois University and his M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. Chris currently leads marketing efforts to grow PacMoore’s food contract manufacturing business in the areas of dry blending, spray drying, extrusion, re-packaging, and consumer packaging.