Kitchen Conundrum - How Safe are your Food Service Employees?

It 'a Saturday night, the restaurant is full, the kitchen of the restaurant is buzzing. Employees are focused on service to its customers as quickly as possible. Not much time right now to think about safety. However, food security is a service line of the bottom of every successful business. Regardless of the restaurant's reputation or customer satisfaction, a focus are food insecure service may lead to serious injury of employees as well as food security.

One company that has an active safety program not only achieves a reduction of compensation costs for workers, but also increase employee productivity. Customers benefit from a constant quality of the food, prompt service and enhance corporate reputation.

To fully achieve these objectives, a thorough risk assessment must be conducted. The assessment will identify and analyze all injury-producing conditions and tools in the workplace. The evaluation includes determining where new controls or work practices will benefit the goal of accident prevention and occupational safety.

Slips, trips and falls

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, sprains, strains and sprains were the leading cause of non-fatal accidents in 2005. Of the more than 500,000 injuries, has led many in fractures, back injuries, head injuries and other injuries. When converted into dollars, the average cost of a distortion / strain injury was $ 15,757 reflecting medical and indemnity. Obviously, avoiding slips, trips and falls is reduced to a good cleaning. Employers should purchase "Caution: Wet Floor" signs, grease-resistant and non-slip mats and shoes. The easier it is for an employee to clean up a spill, the more likely it will.

Burns

Even the smallest of burns can perform the functions of everyday kitchen painful and even impossible. Every year, thousands of burns can be connected to the foodservice sector. Employers should identify activities that expose employees to steam, hot oil and high temperatures. Resistant to heat, aprons, oven mitts and provide the best protection for employees.

Burns most often occurs when:

Management has not adequately trained or instructed employees on safety

Employees ignore the safety rules or take shortcuts

Employees become laxed in their work and take unnecessary risks

Illness, fatigue, or dependency relates to a power of concentration

Lifting correctly

Training employees to properly lift and move heavy loads also greatly reduce the risk or injury. You will also save employers from lawsuits or expensive medical costs. Besides the staff training on proper lifting heavy objects, employees should also use trolleys or carts to do the lifting work for them, ask a friend to help him or her, and clear the path of obstacles.

Preventing Cuts and lacerations

In a typical busy night, a galley, a restaurant may look like a knife juggling act. Required for all food service establishments, the knives are a major cause of accidents at work. In an attempt to reduce the risk of injury knife, consider the following:

Evaluate several knives that could be used at the workplace

Involve employees and to seek feedback

Test knife options appropriate for the activity

Specify which task has been completed with which a knife, when sharpening is necessary and where the knives should be stored

Training employees is essential to respect the practices of working with knives. Brief small group training sessions could focus on the proper use of a type of knife or a blade of security in general. Most food service establishments also utilize equipment such as slicers, cutters and grinders. Companies must be aware of federal and state laws that prohibit those under 18 years of age by setting up, operating, cleaning or repair of such equipment.

Equally important is the training of employees on the proper use of utility knife box cutters when opening windows and shipments of food supply. Damage to the product as a result of careless box cutting accounts for millions of dollars in losses for businesses each year. Razor blades or broken pieces by blades cassette may contaminate the products, with consequent potential dangers for consumers. Recently, a customer of a Bradenton, Florida, McDonald reportedly found a razor blade in his breakfast sandwich. Reports did not indicate how the blade of a razor arrived, but a TV report said that cutters were used to open boxes of food .......