Ideas to Get Safety Culture Buy In from Summer Staff

Summer months at fast food restaurants generally see an uptick in temporary and seasonal staff whether it is out of school youth saving for a car or adults adding on another job while there are more hours of daylight. Though they may only be staff for three months, that three months can be sufficient time to have a horrible impact on your workers compensation experience modification. As such, it is key to get them well trained and oriented to your safety culture. Here are some ideas on how to make that happen:

Be clear you have a safety-first culture. Any new employee is more likely to complete tasks more slowly than a seasoned one this includes a teen employee with no prior job experience. Managers should be trained on how to encourage efficiency and improvement in these new employees, without pressuring them and possibly encouraging them to cut corners In addition, your on-boarding process should really emphasize completing tasks safely.
Give them skill appropriate tasks they can successfully perform. Monitor and increase those tasks as the fast food worker shows proficiency. Don't just assume that because they have prior work experience that they will perform as task safely and according to your best practices. Verify they are performing the task safely and then permit additional tasks to be added.
Do not, under any circumstance, merely give them a handout or book and expect them to read or retain it. Be interactive in your learning activities. Test their knowledge and understanding of what you are training them on.
Consider creating a safety related contest specifically for your temporary and seasonal staff. Incentives can be very quick ways to get buy in among your fast food restaurant staff. Be sure they are crafted to measure improvement and knowledge opposed to occurrence based. Occurrence based incentives have been know to only discourage reporting of incidents and not increase safety necessarily.

The work experience you provide for these new and young employees is essential to the continuing function of the economy. Lets be sure that is a safe experience.