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

In addition to the annual competition, Clyde’s has “safety ambassadors,” employees who volunteer to promote food, employee, and customer safety. One thing the ambassadors do is to get employees to sign their names to safety posters to show they’ve learned the material on the posters. “As soon as we had safety ambassadors collect signatures from the staff, they paid attention,” Griffith says, and safety infractions “took a double-digit decline.” Clyde’s compensates these ambassadors and pays taxes on that extra compensation as well.

Griffith believes employees are motivated by a natural instinct to do the right thing. But food safety is also a consideration when the time comes to do performance appraisals for hourly employees. “It’s all tied together. You can’t reward for just one thing, but it encourages them to put all the balls in the air and include food safety and management in that,” adds Griffith.

And then there are the prizes: The winning team in the hand washing competition receives $1,200, while the runner-up team receives $400. Other participants each receive $25. “The winners usually have the money spent already,” she says. “Last year’s team was a second-time winner, which took it seriously and won two years in a row. Most were waitresses who took time after work to study.”

Clyde’s knows that training employees to handle food properly is a never-ending process. It’s not train people and then you’re done. It’s like a language: If you don’t speak it, you won’t remember it.

Overman is a freelance food industry writer based in Arlington, Va. Reach her at (703) 465-8605 or [email protected].