Many managers hold monthly, weekly, or even daily training sessions to make sure that employees remember essential food safety principles. Try using our training tips to improve food safety at your establishment.
Personal Hygiene
We all carry disease-causing microorganisms on and in our bodies. Good personal hygiene is essential to keeping these microorganisms away from food.
Review the importance of personal hygiene with these simple questions:
- What are some basic things you can do each day to maintain your personal hygiene?
Shower, wear clean clothes, wash hands, tie hair back, clean under fingernails, and avoid wearing jewelry to work. - Why should our clothing, uniforms, and aprons be clean?
Wearing dirty clothes introduces harmful pathogens into food preparation areas. - Why shouldn’t you eat, drink, chew gum, or use tobacco in or around food preparation areas?
Chewing and eating around food preparation areas can spray saliva, food, and harmful pathogens into the food being prepared.
To promote personal hygiene, consider implementing the following ideas in your establishment:
- Have a designated area where employees can take breaks to eat and drink that is separate from food preparation areas. A designated break area will help keep the bacteria or viruses that can be carried by saliva from contaminating your customers’ food.
- Consider providing two or three uniforms or aprons for employees so that they will always have a clean one to wear to work.
- Your staff members who are not working and are not groomed and dressed for safe food handling should not enter food preparation areas. Because pathogens reside on our skin and clothes, your off-duty staff can track germs into your food prep areas and contaminate them.
One of the best ways to make sure your employees understand food safety is to provide careful and regular training for them. While StateFoodSafety.com’s online courses utilize the most effective teaching techniques, it is also important that you continue to educate your employees on food safety after they have completed our courses.
—Cami Mills
