There are few industries where hand safety and hygiene is as important as it is within the food industry.
Regardless of where you are in the value chain, there is a responsibility on you to maintain the highest standards of safety possible both for your customers and for your employees.
In this article, we’re going to run through some reasons why this is so important and what you can do to maintain a very high standard of hand safety.
Prevent Food Contamination.
The most obvious example is that your workers can contaminate the food you’re preparing if you’re not upholding certain standards.
We’ve seen so many examples of food-borne illness outbreaks in recent years and you don’t want to be one of those cases because it can destroy your reputation.
Ensuring that your workers are wearing the right gloves and are washing their hands regularly is a pre-requisite for this work. In most countries there will even be regulations that aim to enforce this hand hygiene – so you need to make sure that you’re doing what needs to be done here.
Avoid Accidents and Injuries.
For many food production pipelines, workers will be working with highly specialized and powerful machinery.
These machines can be dangerous if not used correctly and you want to protect your staff members wherever possible to avoid potential hand injuries.
Some things you can do here are to ensure proper training and education, provide safety gloves where necessary, encourage focus and concentration when using the machine, and invest in machines that have strong safety mechanisms.
All of these things will help avoid injuries to your workers which can hamstring your operations if you’re not careful.
Reduces Costs.
This might sound counterintuitive to some, but when you’re taking hand safety seriously, you’ll find that you can make your processes more efficient, and you’ll be dealing with a lot less waste as you move through the value chain.
This reduces costs and can improve your company’s bottom line as a result.
Safety is one of those underlying pillars that have positive knock-on effects for everything it touches so don’t underestimate how impactful it can be.
Uphold A Good Business Reputation.
There is also a social expectation on the part of your customers that you are doing everything within your power to improve hand safety within your food processing.
Customers want to know that you are prioritizing this and can often make purchasing decisions based on your reputation within the marketplace.
It’s not just the right thing to do, but it is also something that can give you a competitive edge in the market if you become known as the company that puts safety and hygiene first.
Conclusion
As you can see, hand safety and hygiene in the food industry are crucial for a number of reasons. It’s something that you cannot afford to ignore because it affects all your stakeholders including your employees and your customers.
Here at Nastah, we produce a wide range of safety gloves – some of which are perfectly suited for the food industry. If you’re looking for a reliable supplier that can help you get on top of this important need, get in touch today, and let’s see how we can help.
