Do you regularly train your team in food safety and keep training records?
Do you know what you want to do, but time and the business demands take over?
Is the administration is too much or releasing the person to be trained is difficult?
As the numbers of allergy sufferers increases and more unfamiliar foods become popular, it is critical that your team understand how to handle food safely. If there is an issue with food safety, training records become part of your due diligence defence.
My top tips are:
- Create calendar reminders of certificate expiry dates,
- Keep the training short and relevant. Let your team know about news articles that talk about food safety and discuss court cases. They are great discussion starters.
- Ensure that the training is documented.
- Check competency a couple of days afterwards.
- Change the way the training is delivered, use games, videos, text and audio. I have played hangman, used word searches and crosswords.
- Make the training relevant to the role that the trainee is employed for.
- If you have a multi skilled team, ensure their food safety knowledge matches their tasks.
I recently attended an IFST event where due diligence was discussed from different perspectives. The view from all of the speakers was that training records form the basis of all due diligence defences. The courts and regulators want to know that your business is doing it right all of the time and that your tema know what they are doing and understands the risks. They also encouraged the recording and reviewing of near misses in the same way as health and safety near misses are reviewed.
There are free resources in the Food Standards Agency website including allergen training.
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