When thinking to yourself on whether you should move over to a Digital Haccp Management System consider the 7 questions below?
- Would you like to know the true temperature of your refrigeration at any given moment instead of twice a day?
- Would you like to prevent staff massaging temperature information and back filling this information from memory?
- Would you like staff accountability and trace errors to a specific person, place and time?
- Would you like all your service providers to upload for food / manual handling certificates, service reports for pest control and grease trap maintenance?
- Would you like to create an audit check list to evaluate your site or sites which would score according?
- Would like to create a bespoke check list for an individual employee and then to be notified when it is or is not complete?
- Would you like to test the knowledge of your staff on your haccp processes to see if they need retraining?
Would you like to know the true temperature of your refrigeration at any given moment instead of twice a day?
As you probably aware, it is a legal requirement that you must record the temperatures of each and every fridge on your premises at least twice a day. This means that a staff member must visit every refrigerated unit on their premised and record the temperature. This is usually done by reading the fridge indicator and recording it on a paper record sheet. These sheets can be issued by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland ( FSAI)
If you have 5 fridges or 55 fridges, do you staff visit each one of them and record the exact temperature, or do they have a cup of tea and back fill these records? In my experience, customers confide in me that it is the latter that usually happens.
Why would that be?
I think we can agree that staff do not have time to do these checks especially in this current environment, staff would not be allow to treapse all over a building if the site had multiple fridges for fear of getting lost ( if you know what I mean), especially when 9 times out of 10 the fridge temperatures are correct.
In your world, would you see 10% of all fridge temperatures taken that are outside their parameters have a corrective action issued? ( I will deal the corrective actions later in the blog).
So now, as you think of your refrigeration and your current record keeping, are you like alot of my customers that require fridge monitoring on a 24/7 basis to know when your refrigeration is performing badly because it is old, to know if staff are constantly leaving the door open causing a spike in temperatures resulting the fridge motor having to work alot harder to maintain the fridge room temperature resulting in higher energy bills or in the event of a major malfunction of a freezer going down in the middle of the night and losing all the stock.
Then a fridge montoring system would give you peace of mind.
Would you like staff accountability and trace errors to a specific person, place and time?
It wasn't me!!!!
How many times have you heard that?
Catering establishments are notoriously disjointed because there is alot of staff doing alot of different duties in a very busy environment. Do you know who and when temperature checks have been taken? Ideally these checks especially cooking and hot holding check should be done during service.
Would knowing if these checks are done during these times give you comfort, that if an food poising incident should happen, you would have the exact temperature for that product at the precise time instead of a lot of chefs back filling records at the end of the day.
As with all businesses, there a staff members who eat up work and there are staff that run in the shadows, would you like to know who these people are?
My customers now are able to have retraining conversations or show their teeth conversations with staff member because they have the data from our system.
Would you like all your service providers to upload their food / manual handling certificates, service reports for pest control and grease trap maintenance?
Haccp paperwork is relentless and demands a good filing system. It is so important to be up to date for the eventual upper cut questioning from the health officer.
As you will know Haccp is so much more that temperature record keeping, would an online vault of haccp documents ( food safty plan, food safety / manual handling certificates, service reports for pest control and grease trap mantainence) uploaded and kept up to date by your contactors be of benefit to you.
This would calm the head when the asked where is this document and where is that document?
Would you like to create an audit check list to evaluate your site or sites which would score according?
As you are familiar, all areas of your business need to be checked and audited and Haccp is no different. Kitchen standards and catering professionals haccp performance/ knowledge can get into a rut if not audited. Every section of your business need to examined otherwise it will desend towards chaos.
One of many ways to monitor standards is to have an independant person in your employ or an outside individual to conduct an audit. This audit can be made to be very tight to tie in with your processes / your training and bonus renumeration for staff members. I personally think it is essential fro multisite businesses.
Multi site business need the sames haccp processes so that consistency is maintained especially if staff move between sites to support these sites.
Would like to create a bespoke check list for an individual employee and then to be notified when it is or is not complete?
Communication within a business is very important especially if you run a multiple shift business and verbal communication isn't easy due different shifts. Sometimes giving direction to an employee can be fraught with angst which can be uncomforatble.
Would a bespoke to-do checklist assigned to that individual help with communication and calm you by letting you know that it has or has not been done and what time is what completed? This also can be achieved with a digital check list.
Would you like to test the knowledge of your staff on your haccp processes to see if they need retraining or a kick up the ****
Six months after haccp training of your staff by you personally or by a food safety company, would you like to know if staff have retained this knowlegde or do they need to be retrained.
Constant questioning and examining improves the staff members education resulting improvements in the food safety of your offering. This exercise can be done on a quarterly or half yearly basis which takes the intensity out of personally questioning the knowledge of a staff member.
A digital haccp software would help with questioning. For more information on our digital haccp solution, please click here
There are many, many other features of haccp system that may tweak your interest, please give us a call on 01 6234999.