Peter O’Driscoll, executive director of the Equitable Food Initiative, says his outlook on working with organizations and people with often differing perspectives has changed over time.
“In my younger days, I did a lot of work in advocacy, and advocacy is typically about telling people what they’re doing wrong and what they should do differently,” he says. “At this point in my life, I would say there’s really no point in trying to argue with stakeholders or to convince them to change their positions. So EFI starts from the premise that stakeholder interests are legitimate, even if they are totally opposite and opposed.”
O’Driscoll joined “The Packer Podcast” to share how EFI’s approach to bringing all stakeholders to the table can enact real change.
“What we’ve discovered is that when companies engage and listen to their workers, they do better on things like recruitment and retention,” he says. They become more productive; they become better suppliers. That helps them build business with their customers.”
And O’Driscoll says it’s more than likely those stakeholders disagree on about 90%, but he says, it’s that 10% that overlaps where the opportunities are.
“If you can keep folks focused on the small space where those interests overlap and build trust and build collaboration, you can begin to move out into deeper and more lasting forms of collaboration,” he says.
As for successes in this collaborative approach, O’Driscoll points to his work with Good Farms. As a major retailer looked to build out an EFI certification program, Andrew Williamson, owner of Good Farms, agreed to work with EFI to help build out this certification. And, Good Farms has continued to work with EFI on all of its new initiatives, O’Driscoll says, from greenhouse gas reduction programs to documenting and accrediting agricultural skills.
“What I would say about them is having certified all of their operations, they are really reaping the benefits of a much more engaged and motivated workforce,” O’Driscoll says. “And I hear that from their customers. I hear that from their retail customers. I hear it from farm management, but perhaps from my perspective, most importantly, I hear that from workers when I visit their operations, when they talk about how things have changed over time, on their operations and especially when newer workers compare that workplace culture to other places where they have worked.”
O’Driscoll also talked about how an Los Angeles Times article in 2014 helped spur on the Ethical Charter Implementation Program. He says following a joint effort in the produce industry, the charter was published in 2018. But, he says, advocacy communities criticized the Ethical Charter because it lacked input from labor.
“When the charter was published in 2018, EFI came out, and I think we were among the very few organizations that actually applauded and celebrated the publication,” he says. “And we immediately went to our retail partners, the folks with whom we worked on certification and said: ‘There’s a lot of good stuff in this charter, but how are you going to know which of your suppliers and their growers are actually upholding the principles of this charter? In practice, you have no way of knowing that, and that’s where your risk lies.’ And to their credit, those retail buyers agreed and accepted that there was risk, and that’s when they agreed to work with us on developing an implementation program.”
And O’Driscoll says the spirit of the ECIP is to help suppliers along a journey of continuous improvement.
“It doesn’t have a set of standards,” he says. “It’s a capacity building program, not a compliance test. And that means that even an employer who’s really struggling to implement effective labor management systems can demonstrate engagement and improvement over time. The whole premise of the program is it’s not difficult to embrace continuous improvement if you’re willing to be honest and open about what your starting point is because this ESIP lab software platform will actually guide you through the steps you need to strengthen those management systems over time.
