July 2020 - 21

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The safety officer ensures that team
members and their close contacts at
home have not been experiencing any
symptoms. Employees are encouraged to
be extra cautious and avoid coming in to
work if they feel sick, or if someone they
live with is not feeling well.
While at work, whether in the office
or on the packing line, all employees
follow strict protocols, including wearing
a face mask, regular hand-washing, and
maintaining six feet of distance from
others. Rice Fruit Co. also installed helpful
tools and reminders to improve adherence
to safety procedures, including additional
hand-washing stations and touchless
20-second countdown clocks.
" We have changed everything we do by
watching the flow of employees. We try to
reduce areas where people congregate, like
breaks and lunches. We have cubicles in
the lunchroom, and we have encouraged
people to eat outside or in their cars to stay
in compliance, " said Briggs.
Rice Fruit Co. has focused on four
key pillars of safety as new evidence and
guidance have emerged. These pillars
include employee health and accountability
with health checks, providing masks and
requiring that they be worn at all times,
ensuring employees maintain six feet of
distance from each other, and regular
hand-washing.
" When practiced together, it makes a
difference, " said Briggs. " We initially hired
our COVID response safety officer to
focus on employee health screening, but
that person circulates throughout the day
to ensure other policies are followed, and
offers gentle reminders when people are
too close together. "
more frequent changes in apple varieties.
With fewer people and more distance
between them, the line runes slower. The
team discovered it was more efficient to
do a longer run of a single variety for a few
days' supply.
" That simple change made us more
efficient and able to continue meeting
customer needs, " Briggs shared.
The team has taken these changes in
strides, and management has used the fluid
situation to gather more regular feedback
from employees - through a wider variety
of channels.
" Senior management and the sales team
do much better at communicating and
doing it in different ways - not just sitting
around a table at a formal meeting, "
Briggs said.
The information center keeps the
entire team up to date on every policy
in place, if changes are happening, and
gathering feedback. Managers in each
department have also increased their
conversations with employees to gather
more feedback informally, which helps
solve problems faster.
For example, when fewer people
were interested in working evening
hours, managers discovered that if shifts
started an hour earlier, they would be
more desirable to team members who
needed to get home to their families.
The early morning sign-up was created
to accommodate the lack of child care
options so many of their employees
have experienced. Once the adjustment
was made, it was easier to fill out robust
retail orders.
" In the first few weeks, especially as
you're going through the shock of all
these shutdowns, we were part of an
effort to provide a healthy product, and
to keep grocery stores supplied while
people were nervous about the food
supply, " said Briggs.
By showing up to work each day
(whether at the company's facilities
or home), the Rice Fruit Co. team
has continued to meet demand while
keeping its team safe. FGN
Despite the massive changes in daily
routines, it can be challenging to break the
natural habit of engaging with coworkers.
" This has been such a disruption to
every part of our lives as human beings.
We have natural tendencies to get too
close, and it's helpful to have reminders to
keep each other accountable and caring for
each other. "
In addition to the new policies adopted
to promote employee health and safety,
Briggs describes additional operational
changes as " a million little a-ha moments "
that may have long-term impacts on
internal processes.
With fewer people working on the
packing lines at the same time, Rice Fruit
Co. has tested different ways of running
the lines, and even discovered efficiencies
they will likely carry forward into future
operations post-COVID-19. Typically, they
run pack-to-order, with shorter runs and
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FGN | JULY 2020 | 21

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July 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of July 2020