Location: Grahams Bakery, Dromore, County Down

Reporting to: Head of Technical

Overall Responsibilities of the Role:

The Quality Culture Manager is responsible for strengthening food safety and quality ownership across every area of Graham’s Bakery’s operation. The role is highly visible and shop-floor focused, working alongside managers, supervisors, team leaders and colleagues to turn quality standards into everyday behaviours.

The role holder will help develop a culture where quality is owned by everyone, issues are identified and resolved at source, standards are consistently maintained and continuous improvement becomes part of how the business works every day.

Working closely with Operations, Technical, Engineering and People teams, the role will build capability, confidence and accountability across Bakehouse, Decoration and Packing.

Key Responsibilities and Outputs:

• Developing and embedding a strong food safety and quality culture across the site.
• Increasing operational ownership of quality standards across Bakehouse, Decoration and Packing.
• Translating technical and customer requirements into clear, practical shop-floor behaviours.

Nature and Scope of Responsibilities:

• Maintain a strong and visible presence across all production areas, conducting regular quality walks and engaging directly with employees about standards and improvement opportunities.
• Coach supervisors and team leaders in effective quality leadership, including identifying abnormalities, escalating concerns and sustaining corrective actions.
• Participate in daily operational Tier meetings and challenge quality performance where appropriate.
• Promote a “Quality at Source” approach, preventing defects from being passed to the next stage of the process and reinforcing positive quality behaviours.
• Lead and facilitate structured root cause analysis for significant and recurring quality issues, using practical problem-solving tools such as 5 Why, PDCA and Pareto analysis.
• Identify trends in complaints, defects, rework, GMP performance and non-conformances, driving reduction in repeat issues and quality-related waste.
• Support Lean and continuous improvement activities across the site, promoting Right First Time working throughout the manufacturing process.
• Develop operational ownership of GMP standards and support supervisors and team leaders in maintaining high standards throughout each shift.
• Analyse GMP trends, target recurring areas of non-compliance and ensure actions arising from audits and quality walks are appropriately owned and completed.
• Coach and develop Quality Auditors to become effective quality coaches and verification specialists.
• Build food safety and quality capability within operational leadership teams, delivering engaging quality awareness and improvement sessions.
• Identify skills and knowledge gaps and support the development of appropriate training.
• Support the continued effectiveness of the site Quality Management System, including BRCGS and customer audit readiness.
• Support HACCP, VACCP and TACCP processes, internal audits, corrective actions, customer and product requirements, and standards relating to food safety, legality, authenticity and quality.
• Investigate complaints and non-conformances and verify the effectiveness of corrective and preventive actions.
• Measure success through improvements in quality culture, employee engagement, operational ownership, GMP standards and Right First Time performance.
• Drive measurable reduction in customer complaints, repeat non-conformances, quality-related waste and rework.
• Support improvements in corrective action effectiveness, employee-generated quality ideas, quality training capability and internal and external audit performance.