08 Nov 2021
The most obvious reason to create and adhere to clear food safety policies and procedures is to remain compliant with legislation. Breaching food hygiene and safety rules means potential fines that may amount to many thousands of pounds.
However, creating best practices within your foodservice business, including high levels of employee training, is not ‘just’ about avoiding penalties.
Here are three reasons your business needs food safety processes in place to keep you competitive and profitable.
Serious breaches of food hygiene and safety laws in the UK can be hard to recover from. First, you may face substantial business interruption to rectify any issues that have been identified, especially if an inspection results in the temporary closure of part or all of your operations. Then, you could have to deal with a serious loss of trust.
Customers have high expectations these days, and demand good hygiene standards from all businesses, but especially ones involved in food. Take, for example, the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme for places to eat and buy food in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Customers take a keen interest in this and will avoid establishments with a low rating.
Any blow to your business reputation can seriously affect your ability to remain competitive, making it vital to maintain high food safety processes consistently.
Much of your ability to meet food hygiene and safety standards rests not on your policies and procedures, but on the staff who put those things into practice every day. You can have strict internal regulation, only for an oversight, misunderstanding or lapse in concentration to cause a threat to your food quality goals.
This is just one reason for offering your employees the best food safety training, not just for onboarding new recruits, but as they grow their responsibilities, or simply as a regular refresher. At Sentinel Safety Solutions, we offer 4 types of HABC Accredited Food Safety Courses:
If you do invest in good training for your staff, it can be an important source of employee confidence too, and faith in you as an employer, potentially helping you to recruit and retain your workforce.
Mention has already been made of how a failure in food hygiene or safety can reduce your productivity levels, and possibly reduce customer numbers. Turn this around, and there are some operational advantages to introducing consistent food safety processes.
Creating a good understanding of your quality expectations and targets among your staff via food safety training keeps them working in a uniform and cohesive way. Food waste could be minimised, and a timetable of regular and rigorous cleaning procedures could save you time and money on specialist materials or deep clean subcontracting.
Contact us to kickstart your enhanced food safety processes with risk assessments and accredited staff training courses for the food sector.
