FreshCheck's Role in Sustaining Food Safety Standards Through Staff Transitions
The food industry is often marked by a high turnover of staff, which poses significant challenges, especially in maintaining food safety standards. This frequent change can lead to knowledge gaps among new and existing staff, increasing the level of risk, consistency and effectiveness of hygiene practices. Addressing these gaps through consistent, simple, and scalable training solutions helps to keep staff members well-informed and up-to-date with critical hygiene practices. In this blog we will explore how FreshCheck's swab-based colour change hygiene verification system can empower Quality Assurance (QA) and wider team members through its accessibility and simplicity.
Hygiene Monitoring Simplified
FreshCheck's hygiene testing process begins with setting up test points and sample plans through the app or web portal by identifying critical areas for regular monitoring and organising the testing schedule. The swab test involves using FreshCheck's colour-changing swabs on designated surfaces to detect microbial activity or organic residues. This step is crucial for assessing the cleanliness level at each test point. After swabbing, results are interpreted with FreshCheck's colour chart. A colour change to yellow or orange signals contamination, prompting immediate corrective actions, such as recleaning or launching a more thorough investigation. Green represents a warning requiring a re-clean and re-test, while shades of blue indicate cleanliness or excess cleaning chemicals.
Data Capture
The final step, data recording, leverages the FreshCheck app to document the results by photographing the swab against the test point for a visual record. This process ensures the maintenance of high hygiene standards and simplifies the data capture for comprehensive hygiene reporting and analysis. Through this streamlined approach, FreshCheck enables food safety teams to maintain a consistent hygiene monitoring procedure and facilitate proactive food safety standards.
Making Contamination Visible
FreshCheck's hygiene verification system offers our clients an innovative solution in food safety management. As outlined above, the system is very simple to use and empowers all staff members, regardless of their technical background, to participate actively in maintaining hygiene standards. The speed with which testing can be completed allows testing processes to be seamlessly integrated into daily routines. The simple results provide a testing regime that is understood by all members of staff, making the communication of environmental monitoring streamlined and easy. The FreshCheck App [available on iOS and Android] enhances this simplicity by offering easily accessed historical test records, crucial for bringing new employees up to speed on any historical areas for extra attention. By creating an environment of transparency about existing cleaning hot spots, new staff are equipped with the knowledge needed to understand their role in the company's hygiene standards.
Empowering Employees
FreshCheck's system is designed to simplify hygiene verification, making it accessible and engaging to everyone. By providing a visual confirmation of cleanliness and enabling easy recording of results through the App, the system fosters a proactive food safety culture. It allows food businesses to maintain consistency and accessible historical data amidst staff transitions, with the common goal of achieving excellent hygiene standards. The availability of digital records, featuring a traceable history of hygiene tests, can be instrumental in streamlining compliance with regulatory standards and facilitating the onboarding of new staff. This not only provides consistency but a significant peace of mind for new staff to join and feel empowered in their new role. These records also generate easily understood reports, supporting everyone from swab takers to head of operations in identifying areas that need attention and demonstrating consistent hygiene practices across the board.
Culture of Safety and Quality
The FreshCheck system aims to actively encourage a culture of safety and quality within the food industry. By embedding such intuitive and effective tools into the core of food safety programs, FreshCheck plays a critical role in sustaining high standards, irrespective of staffing changes. This not only enhances the food safety landscape but also nurtures a committed and knowledgeable workforce, ready to uphold the highest standards of hygiene and safety.