Ensuring Workers Safety in Restaurants & Bars: A Legal Guide

Do you manage a business in the hospitality sector? If so, you need to do everything you can to protect your employees. It’s not uncommon for employers to be sued for negligence. There are many ways an employer can be negligent in hospitality, from improperly training kitchen staff to not telling cleaners to put signs up notifying people that floors are wet after mopping. This post will explore this topic in more detail, telling you how you can ensure worker safety and prevent yourself from having to deal with any lawsuits or complaints of carelessness.

Seeking Legal Support

If you are not an employer but instead somebody who has had to deal with workplace negligence, seek legal support. The attorneys from GDH Law make clear on their site that workplace negligence is unacceptable. Under no circumstances should you tolerate your employer disregarding your safety, putting you at risk. When searching for legal representation, it’s important that you find a lawyer who specializes in workplace safety. There are many different types of personal injury lawyers. One that specializes in workplace safety will be able to give your case the attention that it deserves.

Train Employees Well

Moving away from lawsuits and onto how to protect your employees, employers need to make sure that their employees are properly trained. Improper training is one of the main reasons that employees hurt themselves. If you do not train employees, legal action can be taken against you. For example, if kitchen staff are not trained in how to operate the equipment they work with and injure themselves, they could take legal action against you. Lawsuits can ruin your business’s reputation, especially in the hospitality sector.

Reward Safe Behaviour

A good way to cultivate a culture of responsible behavior is to reward employees for behaving safely. The more you reward employees for behaving safely, the less likely accidents are to happen. Something to know about rewarding safe behavior is that in addition to motivating the person to behave safely, you will also motivate all of the people around that person. Motivating employees can be a difficult thing to do. You can reward employees by giving them bonuses, time off, or just recognition. Sometimes acknowledging an employee’s achievements is all it takes to inspire them.

Use Labels and Signs

Putting labels on signs up around your workplace can be a good way to ensure that employees are kept safe. Labels and signs can also protect you legally. If you put up labels and signs notifying employees of hazards and they do not follow the advice given to them, their injuries are their own fault, and they cannot hold you responsible. Of course, you still need to make sure that you maintain your workplace and keep it safe. Putting signs up doesn’t mean you can ignore maintenance and allow your workplace to deteriorate. For example, if there are exposed wires, a sign that says, “Do not touch the wires,” is not sufficient. You need to take steps to ensure that the wires are repaired so that nobody electrocutes themselves.

Ensure Workplace Cleanliness

Legally, your workplace needs to be kept clean. This is especially true for business owners who own restaurants or bars. An unhygienic workplace can be dangerous to employees and customers. Nobody’s going to want to come to your restaurant if cleanliness is not taken seriously. Health inspectors will likely attend your business once or twice a year so that they can make sure that food or drinks are being served in a clean kitchen or environment.

Access to Proper Tools

You need to make sure that your employees have access to proper tools, as in tools and equipment designed for the work that they are doing. A lot of companies make the mistake of buying outdated or improper tools for their staff to use. While it’s certainly true that you don’t necessarily always have to use the correct tools to get the job done, it’s good to for legal reasons. If employees hurt themselves because they aren’t using the right tools or equipment, you will be held liable, especially if you have encouraged them to use the wrong equipment.

Mental Wellness Breaks

If you care about your employee’s health, make sure that you encourage them to take mental wellness breaks. A mental wellness break is when you give your employees some time off to prioritize their mental health, i.e., working through anxiety or depression. You can give employees various mental wellness breaks each day to help them deal with their emotions, or you can give them a few days off a month. Giving employees wellness breaks will reduce their chances of developing work-induced stress. Work-induced stress can lead to accidents happening in the office or workplace.

Safety Protocols

Make sure that you introduce strict safety protocols. You need to train employees on safe working. You also need to encourage them to report employees they see who aren’t following safety protocols. Throughout your business, put signs up reminding employees of necessary safety protocols. Ensure that employees caught disregarding safety protocols are punished. You need to keep a written record of when people disregard safety protocols so that if they end up hurting themselves in the future, you can bring up the fact that they have a history of ignoring company policies introduced to keep people safe.

Perform Inspections

Finally, make sure that you periodically perform inspections, checking that employees are following the safety protocols that you have introduced. You can set cameras up around dangerous workstations and monitor them every so often. You can also hire somebody to physically walk around your office, watching employees. Many companies appoint a specific employee to the position of inspector. Typically, this employee’s name is kept secret and they operate covertly. By operating covertly, other employees are not alerted to the inspector’s presence and behave normally, meaning it’s easier to catch them when they behave irresponsibly.

In restaurants and bars, you need to ensure worker safety. You can do that by following the guidance given here in this post. This post’s advice will help you to take better care of your workforce, ensuring they do not injure themselves or each other.