Staff member’s assessment of fitness for work plays a vital role in food handling businesses. In other words, the fitness to work assessment checklist will help you in evaluating the worker’s efficiency considering their own health. This checklist must assess fitness for-
- pre-employment,
- existing food handlers or
- workers returning to work after a long illness.
Therefore, a fitness assessment checklist for employees will help in collecting information relating to occupational health and safety at the workplace. As a result, it will provide an overview of good practices at both the policy and workplace levels. At qualizy, proprietors can easily customize this checklist and implement it as well.
Key points to be inspected using this fitness to work assessment checklist-
- Have you suffered from diarrhoea and/or vomiting within the last 48 hours?
- Are you suffering from infected wounds, skin infections or sores
- Did you get in touch with the infectious person in the last 24 hours?
- Have you ever had, or are you known to be a carrier of typhoid or paratyphoid?
- Are you a carrier of any type of jaundice?
- Are you suffering from discharge from the eye, ear or gums/mouth?
- Similarly, are you suffering from boils, styes or septic fingers?
Hence, the manager must ensure that all staff handling food and anyone working in a food handling area knows how to report the symptoms of infection. In addition, also exclude staff with these symptoms from working with or around open food. All food handlers must share the true report with their supervisors so that the risk of spreading contamination can be avoided.
To sum up, prevention is always better than cure. Excluding unnecessary visitors, from food handling, areas and minimising the amount of direct contact with food and food contact surfaces will help to avoid the risk of spreading any infections people may have.