Safety at Your Fingertips: Tips to Ensure Workers Avoid Unsafe Food-handling Practices

It is also important to point out that progress is incremental and training is never over. “When you go back after nine months, they’ve forgotten,” Nelken says. “You have to inject a culture of food safety so that it is not just a ‘flavor of the month’ program. You need a sincere commitment, an enduring relationship, as opposed to a one-night stand.”

Measurements, Not Wishes

Trainers and companies need to set real training goals and then measure them; “otherwise, you’re just dealing with hopes and wishes,” Nelson says. He recommends measuring a particular food safety-related behavior of a randomly chosen 10% of workers to establish a baseline, then tracking all employees’ behavior and conducting spot checks to determine what progress is being made. “Reinforce and follow up. Stake out a goal and keep measuring. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” adds Nelson.

Jim Mann, executive director and chief scientific officer of the Handwashing for Life Institute, has developed measurement tools for hand washing (see article on pg. 42). A good way to start measuring, Mann says, is to have counters in soap dispensers. “To measure the quality of hand washing, have employees put their hands under a black light to check for trace elements. Have them wash their hands, and then use the black light again to show where they missed. They’ll say, ‘Oh, I see, under my ring’ or ‘my long fingernails.’”

What’s normally just a splash and dash, Mann says, can be corrected by showing them the right procedure, checking once more, and continuing to monitor with the black light. Also, Mann suggests getting employees to talk in small groups about when hands need to be washed. “Don’t accuse them of not washing. Help them come up with a list they can agree on” so that they will have ownership of that list and will be committed to its implementation, he adds.

Reward Proper Behavior

Proper food handling behavior should be rewarded, Nelson says, perhaps with bonuses. “You could say that one of the criteria for a bonus is hand washing at the accepted standard.” But, “I think the more powerful way is to reward with things that don’t involve money. People want and need feedback. Information [about improvements] itself is a form of recognition. You want people to go for a percentage that is better than the baseline. But if you don’t keep score, employees can’t have fun.”

Nelken believes that team behavior should be rewarded. “Sometimes [an individual reward] backfires. Several other people may feel they’ve done the same thing, but they didn’t receive a reward. I recommend recognizing the unit.”

Meriwether echoes this idea. “Build-ing your team around food safety is the only way to do it. Build a team where they all understand the ramifications. Start with good leadership, follow with communication, and have solid operations that employees can work with. It takes concerted effort by management. It’s more than ‘we’re going to build a team, let’s have a barbeque.’” But the effort is worth it because “your employees are the keepers of your brand.”

Clyde’s Team

Clyde’s Restaurant Group, in the Washington, D.C. area, also uses teamwork—and team competitions—to promote food safety training. An annual hand washing contest among teams from the company’s 11 restaurants is organized each September—Food Safety Education Month— and focuses on the basics and timing of good hand washing and food safety knowledge.

The competition includes cooks, busboys, wait staff, and hostesses, says Victoria Decker Griffith, director of quality, who created the program about seven years ago. “There are 25 food safety questions, such as the reportable symptoms of illness and correct cooking temperatures. We challenge them to know it all. We randomly draw questions out of a hat,” she says. “We have a 95%-plus correct answer response.”