The FIRST and most important Step
If a chain is only as strong as the weakest link then a food service operation is only as safe as the worst hand-hygiene employee.
It is impossible to supervise the activity and behavior of all employees all of the time. Engage your employees in effective hand washing through knowledge. Educate and train them on the risks, the law, best practices and, most importantly, their personal role in serving safe food to all custome
Make foodborne illness and handwashing knowledge a requirement of employment:
- Introduce existing employees to handwashingforlife.com
- Make Handwashingforlife Certification a requirement of the job. Certification can be accomplished on-line and within 30 minutes by workers already knowledgeable in hand washing. New employees can usually be certified within 60 minutes.
- The process can be completed anywhere with access to the Internet. It's easy to do at home and other family members can also benefit.
- Complete the handwash test with each employee at your on-site handwash station.
- Have every employee sign the Pledge of Professionalism.
- Make the Hepatitis A vaccination a requirement of employment.
- This may sound like overkill but Hepatitis A is a growing and dangerous concern. The vaccine solution is easy and relatively painless
Sick worker exclusion policy:
- Establish a policy that prevents sick employees from working during the period of their illness and for 72 hours following the absence of symptoms. View the Exclusion Policy in the Employee Hand Hygiene Manual.
- Monitor employees for symptoms of disease. Some things to look for:
- Fever:
- Is daily temperature monitoring a reasonable action?
- Coughing:
- Facial masks are not adequate, send employee home.
- Diarrhea:
- Watch for frequent trips to toilet
- Fecal-hand-oral contamination is a serious problem.
- Vomiting:
- Send employee home.
- Headache:
- An early sign of oncoming illness.
- Flu like symptoms
- Fever:
