An overview for the restaurant industry

Everyone who works for a restaurant must work safely and encourage others to do the same. But it’s the employer who must develop and implement policies and procedures to prevent workplace injury and diseases in a systematic way.

In the fast-paced environment of restaurants, a common attitude is that accidents are inevitable and a part of doing business. But injuries mean losses. Lost money, lost time, and lost productivity. And more importantly, they mean that workers and their families suffer pain and have their lives disrupted.

If accidents are prevented, the savings can be significant – less overtime, less retraining, and less time spent investigating accidents, to name a few. Other benefits are also rewarding – morale improves and workers feel valued.

Restaurants take pride in the service they offer customers. Sometimes employees take customer satisfaction so seriously, they think of their customers’ safety before their own. Restaurants could prevent many workplace injuries by paying the same kind of attention to employee health and safety as they do to customer satisfaction.

The four most common types of accidents in the restaurant industry from 1992 to 1996 were:

1. Being struck by an object or equipment caused 24 per cent of the restaurant industry’s accepted time-loss claims. These are accidents where the worker is injured by a moving object such as equipment and tools.
2. Falls on the same level accounted for 18 per cent of all time-loss claims. Seventy per cent were caused by slippery surfaces, and 5 per cent were due to tripping or rough surfaces. Women had claims for falls on the same level two and a half times more often than men.