5 ways to prevent restaurant injuries

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Help clients lower their risk of restaurant injuries or illness

No doubt your restaurant owner is already aware of the direct costs of an injury or illness, such as higher workers’ compensation premiums. On the other hand, they may not be fully aware of the hidden costs. Besides the medical costs of an injured employee, one lost workday injury adds more costs. These include loss of productivity, time and costs to hire or retrain a replacement employee, plus time and costs to repair or replace equipment if necessary. Add to that list reduced employee morale.

Some hazards in restaurants are easy for workers to spot: a hot stove can potentially burn their hand or a ham slicer could cut their fingers. Some hazards are less visible and, on the surface, may not be recognized as hazards. Examples are the repetitive motion from chopping vegetables all day or lifting heavy trays, or daily using strong cleaning products that may cause lung damage. OSHA segments restaurant job hazards into these three categories: Safety hazards which cause immediate accidents and injuries, such as knives, ovens or slippery floors that can result in burns, cuts or broken bones. Ergonomic hazards that cause sprains and strains, such as doing repetitive tasks or heavy lifting. Other health hazards are additional workplace conditions that can make an employee sick, such as noise, chemicals, heat or stress.

When your eatery client integrates these five steps towards safety and health into their overall management, they can reduce the risk of injury-related losses.

According to Cal/OSHA, the predominant restaurant hazards causing serious accidents are:

  • Burns (18 percent)
  • Falls (13 percent)
  • Amputations (8 percent)
  • Chemical exposures (6 percent)
  • And to a lesser extent, lacerations, crushing, electric shock and vehicle accidents
Related: 31 restaurant fire prevention tips for business owners

 

1. A frontline defense against restaurant injuries and illness

Management is responsible for ensuring that all safety and health policies and procedures are clearly communicated and understood by all employees. Supervisors and leads are expected to enforce the rules fairly and uniformly. All employees are responsible for using safe work practices, following all directives, policies and procedures and assisting in maintaining a safe work environment.

Your client’s managers and supervisors are responsible to evaluate the safety performance of all workers. They should recognize employees who perform safe and healthful work practices (positive reinforcement). Provide training and re-training to workers whose safety performance is deficient. And discipline workers for failure to comply with safe and healthful work practices.

 

2. Assessing workplace hazards

Periodic inspections will help your client uncover workplace hazards and evaluate how best to eliminate them. These safety inspections should be performed by the restaurant supervisor:

  • At least weekly or at the supervisor’ discretion, depending on conditions and activities. Additional daily checks should be made at the beginning of the day’s work.
  • When new substances, procedures or equipment that present potential new hazards are introduced into the workplace.
  • When new, previously unidentified hazards are recognized.
  • When occupational injuries and illnesses occur.
  • When workers are hired and/or reassigned, explaining new processes, operations or tasks for which a hazard evaluation has not been previously conducted.
  • Whenever workplace conditions warrant an inspection.
Related: Workplace safety reward programs help stop accidents before they start

 

3. How to communicate a safety plan to prevent restaurant injuries and illness

First, it’s important to have clearly defined restaurant and kitchen-specific health and safety rules that are enforced consistently. Next, it’s best to incorporate the safety plan into new worker and temporary employee orientation. A discussion of restaurant and kitchen health and safety policies and procedures should include a Q & A time for new workers to get clarification, since many will be new to the restaurant business.  Provide for language translation if necessary. Their supervisor will need to follow up with them to ensure workers are incorporating their training into their daily tasks.

Reinforce training with posted safety information.

Safety meetings should be held consistently; frequency may vary, depending on the identification of hazards or occurrence of injuries and illnesses. Your client may also want to consider a system for workers to anonymously inform management about workplace hazards.

 

4. Conduct training to prevent restaurant injuries and illness

Training should include

  • An emergency action plan and fire prevention plan, along with measures for reporting any unsafe conditions, work practices, injuries and when additional instruction is needed.
  • Use of appropriate clothing, including gloves, footwear, and personal protective equipment.
  • Information about chemical hazards to which employees could be exposed and other hazard communication program information.
  • Availability of toilet, hand-washing and drinking water facilities.
  • Provisions for medical services and first aid, including emergency procedures.

When should training take place?

  • When new and temporary workers are onboarded.
  • When workers are given new job assignments for which training has not previously provided.
  • Whenever a new hazard is recognized due to the introduction of new substances, processes, procedures or equipment to the workplace.
  • Whenever managers become aware of a new or previously unrecognized hazard.
Related: Avoid these top 7 workers’ compensation claim mistakes

 

5. Restaurant injury investigation and mitigation

Investigation of workplace accidents, hazardous substance exposures and near-miss incidents will be done by managers and supervisors, reviewing the scene as soon as possible. As they interview affected workers and witnesses, their goal is fact-finding, not faultfinding. Once they’ve determined the causes of the accident/exposure/near-miss incident, your client’s team can take corrective action to prevent restaurant injuries and illness.

This restaurant safety checklist can help them jumpstart creating a plan to lower their risk of restaurant injuries and illness. The checklist is part of a 44-page restaurant worker manual created as a joint project of the Labor Occupational Health Program at UC Berkeley and Young Workers United.

Related: Top insurable risks to business growth for small-to-medium businesses

Agents, take a look at our Workers’ Compensation Program to add to your portfolio of insurance solutions.

This article was originally published on the Arrowhead Tribal website. It has been updated and modified to better fit the needs of Arrowhead’s Core Commercial and Workers’ Compensation producers and their clients.