3 Getting Started: Assess and Measure
The top five risk factors that most often are responsible for foodborne illness outbreaks are:
- Improper hot/cold holding temperatures of potentially hazardous food
- Improper cooking temperatures of food
- Dirty and/or contaminated utensils and equipment
- Poor employee health and hygiene
- Food from unsafe sources
When food is being prepared in a food facility operator, the presence of one or more of these risk factors dramatically increases the risk of a foodborne illness outbreak. If one of these risk factors is observed in the food facility, it constitutes a major violation and must be immediately corrected.
Just as operational practices evolve for greater efficiency, an effective food safety environment is never static. It requires a commitment across upper management and owners as well as the entire organization toward continual assessment and improvement. In this section, we will discuss ways to assess and measure an existing food safety culture. It is imperative to assess and measure an existing culture before creating or adapting a new Food Safety Culture plan because it identifies the strengths and weaknesses currently existing in the employee culture.
Assess: To begin, the assessment of the current food safety culture identifies the company’s strengths and weaknesses regarding how the employees feel about the existing culture. Assessments can include employee surveys about company values and food safety culture, a review of current food safety practices, interventions, training and employee evaluations, a review of company communication, a review of social media, a review of both internal and external marketing.
Consideration should be given to developing specialized assessments that only assess and measure each specific audience rather than one document trying to evaluate everything and everyone.
For example, the assessment for the front of the house staff should focus on the role in food safety culture in customer service. As the back of the house assessment should focus on food safety culture dealing directly with food handling, production and plating.
Measure: After the initial assessments are performed, the results create the baseline of both strengths and weaknesses. It is this baseline that all future assessment results will be compared and management decisions for ongoing communication, investments and changes can be made.
The operation should establish a schedule of when and how often the assessments should be conducted during the year. However, time does need to be given for any changes to be implemented, trained and evaluated before saying something doesn’t work and implementing new change. Employees need to be given time to adapt, engage and implement change.
identifies the company’s strengths and weaknesses regarding how the employees feel about the existing culture
comparing the assessment results with an established baseline where decisions will be made.