Worker Participation

What is worker participation for food safety?

Worker participation is important in any management system in your company. This is because your workers are on the front-line of the day-to-day processes in your business. This means they are in the best position to understand and manage the risks in these processes.

For food safety your workers are the one who are physically dealing with food safety risks every day. It seems logical to encourage worker participation in food safety.

Steps for Food Safety Worker Participation

1. Education - The first step towards involving your workers in participating in food safety is by educating them in the principles of food safety, we have written a blog post on this here.
2. Training - The next step towards worker participation in food safety, is to train your employees around the handling and processing of foods. This is especially important for foods which pose a risk of contamination.
3. Culture - Install a no blame culture.  This means that employees are free to raise issues with your management without fear of reprisal.
4. Assess - You need to continuously assess and review whether employees are following your food safety control plans.
5. Celebrate - During your assessment and there has been great performance against expectations then celebrate that.

Following these steps, it is important to be continually encouraging worker participation in food safety.

It is so important to encourage worker participation for food safety because of the drastic effects which could occur if correct food safety isn’t implemented. These include risks to your workers health and well being, which would may involve time off work, and health issues. 

Learn More:

• What is training for food safety?
• What is ISO 22000?
• What is Worker Participation for Heath and Safety?