More than one-third of work-related injuries happen during people’s first year on the job — and the most insurance claims from first-year workers (53 percent) come from the restaurant industry. That’s according to the 2022 Injury Impact Report from Travelers, which examined 1.5 million workers’ compensation claims over a four-year period. Keep this in mind as you onboard and train new staff, particularly as other important concerns like Covid regulations, food safety and staffing vie for attention in restaurant kitchens. At a time when so many restaurants are stretched for resources, ensure you at least take stock of what basic knowledge and support people need to prevent injury before they begin work. Even if you have the best food safety procedures in place for your operation, some obstacles may be standing in the way of your achieving the results you want. Perhaps the problem stems from inconvenient locations for hand sinks, insufficient tools to carry out kitchen tasks, or language barriers getting in the way of clear communication. Perhaps due to the high rate of employee turnover in the industry, you’re having to move more seasoned staff to tasks like food preparation and serving while assigning new workers to cleaning and sanitation duties even if they haven’t had adequate training. According to Steritech, there is a direct correlation between manager turnover and the quality of line-worker training and the overall performance of a store. (The improvement only levels off once a manager has been on the job for 10 years.) That makes it especially important to prioritize the training and retention of new managers who can spot errors early and ensure key sanitation efforts don’t slip. Every restaurant needs a support system to uphold food safety standards and ensure they don’t go downhill during certain shifts. Recruiting a team of advocates can help you build and strengthen your food safety culture — especially if you manage to win over as advocates any staff who are initially skeptical of the effort. In addition to helping you ensure day-to-day food safety tasks don’t fall through the cracks, your safety squad can take on larger initiatives on a cyclical basis, starting with the problems that pose the biggest risks to the business. A visit from a health and safety inspector can cause anxiety in a restaurant, but it doesn’t have to. Spreading the responsibility for food safety across your team can help everyone gain the confidence they need to present your facility well. At a time when turnover remains high and resources are stretched, weaving automated learning tools into the fabric of everyday tasks can help. First identify your basic needs when it comes to training so you can gather resources that address past problems and new processes. While every employee should be given high-level training, follow-up training should be continuous and built into the flow of work, with checklists and mini lessons accessed via mobile device so they accompany the employee and be updated in real time. Food safety maintenance can be a thankless job – noticed most frequently after an inspection has revealed problems or a guest has become ill. September is Food Safety Education Month. As it approaches, plan to leverage the occasion to reinforce your safety procedures with your staff in a positive way. Consider having a safety quiz or a monthly/weekly on-the-spot prize for employees observed to be using key safety practices. Challenge employees to complete tasks that earn them food safety raffle tickets over the course of the month, with a prize drawing at the end. By making food safety more fun and less punitive, you may be able to set your business – and staff – on a positive trajectory when it comes to applying best practices. At a time when you’re likely working with a smaller staff and/or onboarding new employees on a regular basis, it’s especially important to be able to deliver food safety training that keeps pace with a wide range of training needs. Technology is of critical help here. Are you currently able to use digital tools to provide your team with short training videos or on-demand guidance from any device – as well as track employees’ progress in meeting training objectives? Doing so is an efficient way to ensure you stay in compliance with regulations and protect food safety. Ask Team Four for help in using technology to deliver targeted training that helps protect your food safety program. Ongoing supply chain and labor challenges mean that many restaurants are trying to accomplish more tasks with fewer resources, but your food safety is one area where you can’t cut corners. As you try to operate in the leanest way possible, food safety tech can help you offload processes that are necessary and also require more labor hours when done manually. Looking across your operation, are there any remaining paper-and-pen processes that could be converted to digital? Are you receiving text or email alerts about the need to complete tasks on time? Can you log photos or other evidence of compliance as needed? Talk to Team Four if you need help in assessing where and how digital processes may help enhance your food safety. Difficult as the current environment is for restaurant operators, it could also be an ideal time to press the reset button on your food safety program – and to reinforce your commitment to it as you onboard new staff. If you’re like most foodservice operators right now, you’re actively trying to recruit staff – and perhaps in even greater numbers than you had to let go at the start of the pandemic. This means you’re likely in the midst of trying to ensure a new, less experienced roster of staff is up to speed about your safety protocols and the day-to-day work of your restaurant. How well you handle the onboarding process plays an important role in an employee’s experience with you: According to research from Modern Restaurant Management, management and communication are two of the factors that impact employee satisfaction the most. To ensure you’re covering the range of methods in which people learn, combine written, digital and on-the-job training tools to communicate policies clearly. For example, you might offer a handbook at the outset that includes your Covid safety protocols, an overview of how your restaurant operates, your restaurant’s values and ethos, guidelines for greeting and interacting with customers, sick leave policies, staff roles and responsibilities, and a review of your technology tools. Complement this with follow-up opportunities for Q&A, job shadowing with an experienced staff member, and digital reviews of training concepts on an ongoing basis. Expect mistakes and create an environment that makes it easy for new staff to admit to them and make adjustments. Restaurants are having to do more with less, make training new staff as straightforward as possible, and uphold safety protocols – so where any processes can be made easier, why not make a change? Cleaning products are one example. They should be simple to use. Can your cleaning products be used in a variety of applications and locations across your restaurant? The food safety company Ecolab advises restaurants to make the cleaning process less complex by using multifunctional cleansers specifically designed to require fewer steps, less time and less dependency on certain temperatures. Covid-19 has made consistent food safety training both more critical and more difficult as operators have tried to adjust to evolving regulations and procedures, as well as increased employee turnover. If your training practices have suffered due to Covid-19, you’re far from alone: A recent study of quick-service operators by NSI International found that more than half of operators said they had had to cancel or delay training due to the challenges of the pandemic. The lack of on-demand training, as well as inconsistency in the quality of courses, has created the conditions for increased food safety risks, it found. If you’re still relying heavily on manual training aids and in-person coaching to onboard staff, ask us how you can better automate these tasks this year – or deliver real-time training updates remotely in case of absence. |
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