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Posted By Richard Chalkley
We provide fridges for the staff to store food in while at work. Occasionally the food aquires a life all of it's own...
What do others do to ensure the fridges are well looked after where they work or is this a loosing battle?
This was brought up at the H&S Committee and I (foolishly) agreed to look in to it
All suggestions gratefully received.
Richard.
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Posted By shaun allport
Richard,
Had this one.........simple
1 recite welfare regs
2 the company have provided this equipment and have a duty to maintain it in a way not to cause a hazard
3 introduce a policy where by all left food will be disposed of on a given day (we chose Friday evening)
4 post policy on all fridges and COMMUNICATE!
5 give disposal task to the cleaners or alike as part of thier duties.
worked here!
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Posted By TBC
You have to be brutal - On inspection any out of date or known long stay items >>>> BIN.
No prisoners even if you have force march the offending items yourself.
Have employees mark their goods for recognition.
Useful to have a 'kitchen warden' or authorise the cleaning team.
I'm sure others will give you further helpful advice.
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Posted By Stephen_S_Edwards
Richard,
Here's what I would do:
I would take time out of this day and set it aside to give thanks to Zeus, Buddha, Vishnu, God, Mohammed or whichever omnipotent being that decreed that I would be graced with such good fortune that my priority for the day is to get some lazy get to take his / her 5 month old tub of Philedelphia Light out from behind the half-eaten pack of Mattesons Cooked Ham!
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Posted By Dave Wilson
Richard,
This brings to light the point of allowing trivial and non important issues up at safety meetings. It is no wonder that people do not want to attend and managment get annoyed as its not a useful use of theit time etc.
Did you discuss new working at height regs and its impact etc.
For me if its something which is a real management issue which needs resources to solve then managment agreemnet from persons to provide resources funds, training etc.
If its an issue where someone can just go do then just go do mate. JDI!! or even better whoever brings up (pardon the pun) the issue give it to them to solve!
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Posted By TBC
That must a big fridge Dave if you have to discuss the Working at Height Regs. Someone could fall head first into the 'trifling' issues. They may even be left with egg on their face..............more?
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Posted By Ron Hunter
Give your staff a grace period to get themselves organised into a rota of regular cleaning and clearing out e.g. emptying everything out on a Friday afternoon?
Otherwise, it's a case of the Company provideth, and the Company taketh away - no fridge!
(Oooh, I can be hard at times).
And yes, this should be resolved outwith the Health & Safety Consultation Forum.
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Posted By Richard Chalkley
Thanks for all this. I quite agree about trying to keep the Safety Committee free of this kind of clutter which is why I said I'd deal with it so we could move on some.
As to the company giveth... They know where I live...
Richard.
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Posted By Ron Hunter
Ah, but who said it had to be your decision to take them away? Perhaps they also know where the manager (the guy with responsbility and accountability for the issue) lives? ;)
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Posted By Renny Thomson
The Manager may be the worst offender.
After all with the stress they are under, they don't have time to have breaks...
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Posted By carl...
Richard and all that have contributed to this thread,
I have read with interest the responses to this discussion and would like to ask for your considered opinion(s) on the issue of fridge temperatures (sorry Richard for capitalising on your thread).
I have been asked to assess the risk to employees from storing food in company provided fridges. There are the obvious microbiological issues with out-of-date food, but I'm not sure whether there is a legal requirement to monitor the temperature inside each fridge? Legislation applicable to food vendors may apply but I'm not sure. Any pragmatic advice would be appreciated.
Regards,
Carl.
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Posted By Richard Chalkley
Carl,
Valid point so go ahead and hijack.
Richard.
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Posted By Paul Leadbetter
Carl
As this is not a vending situation, food safety legislation probably does not apply. However, a risk assessment under MHSWR would probably require that the fridge temperature is monitored.
Paul
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Posted By Eric Taylor
Way past the point of common sense. There is no requirement to provide fridges. As well as the temperature and bio-hazard monitoring we are also going to pay cleaning staff to clean them and have to do PAT on them too, then the company will have to make sure you dispose of them in an environmentally friendly manner, i.e, pay for it to go.
Anyone think of a good reason why we should provide them in the first place?
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Posted By Robin B
We provide a number of fridges in our canteen although we don't really prepare any foodstuffs, apart from heating soup and other TV dinner type meals brought in by the punters themselves.
We recently had a visit from the Environmental Health who 'advised' us to provide thermometers, record at least weekly readings and to monitor the items in the fridges.
They also 'suggested' that someone [the lady employed in the canteen already has this quali'] have a basic food hygiene certificate and that some one else obtained a higher qualification. It appears that the need for this higher Qualification shall be coming on the 'books' later this year.
I suppose the question is that we are providing fridges as part of our requirement to look after employee's welfare as well as health. If we supply them they are our responsibility to ensure they are maintained in a safe manner ---- yes including PA Testing and disposal
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Posted By Mark Talbot
Hmmm... regulations being quoted again, but what about the business sense?
Having any part of your workforce out to food poisoning is bad business sense. Wasting time on looking at use by dates and seeking ownership is odd.
Recording a weekly temperature tells you the temperature on that day and the way 'fridges work, does not tell you if the foodstuff has spent a whole weekend getting warm only to be chilled again - but it shows some dillegence [a catering manager will tell you that the temperature of the food is the important thing though, and it is important to know it more than just one day in seven].
Ruthless emptying and cleaning every Friday is [in my opinion] the best way to mitigate your business risks.
If they scream, tell them to get their own coolbox in their car / handbag. Better still, go and buy their food fresh and consume it within the hour.
Me and my schoolmates had packed lunches every day in our satchels and never had problems, because we didn't expect them to last longer than half a day. Why should a business store food just because employees want to buy en mass?
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Posted By Jon Bradburn
Just some advise for anyone wanting to regularly monitor fridges for this purpose.
We currently use numerous domestic fridges for storing samples, each of which are monitored by maximum / minimum thermometers.
These have proved very problematic in maintaining a consistent 3-8 degree temperature.
You may well find that a staff fridge which is opened and closed with a high frequency will 'fail' any checks, these fridges are not really designed for such use - do you want to go buy a commercial version at much greater costs?
As the earlier posts suggest - should people be storing perishables for extended periods? not really. If they do is management liable? - thats another story!
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