Organic Valley: Building a culture of food safety through continuous feedback

At Organic Valley, food safety isn’t just a process, it’s a shared value. From farmers and frontline teams to executives, the entire cooperative has built a culture where awareness and accountability are part of everyday decision-making.

Using Achievers, Organic Valley has created a proactive, data-driven approach to measuring and strengthening its food safety culture, transforming what was once a compliance requirement into a core part of its identity.

From compliance to culture

For years, the food industry’s approach to safety was largely reactive — identify an issue, fix it, move on. That changed with the Food Safety Modernization Act, which prioritized prevention overcorrection. For Organic Valley, this shift validated what the company had always believed: Food safety is everyone’s responsibility.

That philosophy became the foundation for Organic Valley’s Food Safety Culture Survey, developed with Achievers Voice of Employee tool, enabling the team to measure how employees live those values every day.

Measuring what matters

Organic Valley’s custom-built survey measures how employees connect to the organization’s food safety mission across four key dimensions:

1. Values and mission: Integrity, ethics, and accountability in every decision
2. People systems: Recognition, communication, and teamwork
3. Adaptability: Planning ahead and driving continuous improvement
4. Consistency: Using trusted data and technology to ensure success

Organic Valley views food safety not as a checklist, but as a mindset — one that shapes how the organization works, collaborates, and continuously improves. The survey reflects that shift, capturing sentiment and awareness while revealing how food safety is woven into daily habits and teamwork.

Raising the bar on audit readiness

Every Organic Valley facility undergoes a Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) inspection each year. Within that audit, there’s a section dedicated to evaluating an organization’s food safety culture, a component that Achievers has made far easier to track and demonstrate. Survey data is regularly shared with GFSI auditors, the FDA, state inspectors, and senior leadership, where it continues to impress stakeholders and highlight the organization’s commitment to ongoing improvement.

The survey provides a clear picture of employee engagement and readiness, helping the team highlight strengths, address gaps, and show tangible progress year over year. With Achievers, audit preparations take less time — and Organic Valley’s teams have more confidence walking into every inspection.

Simplifying surveys, amplifying insights

Before Achievers, the food safety team collected survey responses manually using spreadsheets — a slow and inefficient process that made data aggregation difficult. Now, results are automatically sorted by facility, visualized with clear charts, and available for immediate reporting.

Engaging every employee in food safety

Reaching Organic Valley’s frontline workforce at the production and warehouse facilities was critical to success. To ensure inclusivity, the team embedded the survey link directly into the annual food safety training that all employees must complete. This thoughtful integration paid off, achieving an impressive 86% response rate.

The training connects the “why” behind food safety to Organic Valley’s farmers and customers, featuring messages from leadership that help every employee, even those not handling food daily, understand its importance. By meeting employees where they already are, Organic Valley turned a compliance activity into a meaningful engagement moment — one that resonates across every department.

Recognizing results across every level

The results go beyond numbers. Since introducing the survey, Organic Valley has seen stronger awareness, improved consistency, and a deeper sense of shared accountability. This includes:

1. Zero audit findings related to food safety culture since launch
2. 86% survey participation, representing one of the highest engagement rates across internal programs
3. Continuous annual improvement measured and tracked year over year

The impact extends beyond audits. Leaders now use survey insights to inform training, identify strengths, and prioritize ongoing education — turning feedback into a roadmap for continuous improvement.

Empowering teams with self-serve insights

The Food Safety team now runs the entire food safety culture survey program seamlessly within Achievers. Survey creation, reporting, and analysis are managed internally by the team’s platform administrator — no extra tools or training required. Every year, the process repeats effortlessly: A new link, an updated survey, and instant access to clean, insightful reports.

Continuing the journey toward improvement

Looking ahead, Organic Valley plans to continue using Achievers to benchmark progress, evolve its survey design, and keep food safety culture at the forefront of its operations. Each new year brings a fresh opportunity to measure how values are lived across the business, uncover new insights, and strengthen alignment between teams.

Achievers will remain a key part of this journey — helping Organic Valley track progress, celebrate growth, and sustain the culture of accountability that defines its cooperative. By turning continuous feedback into continuous improvement, Organic Valley ensures that food safety remains not just a priority, but a shared way of working.