Risk management is an essential process for any restaurant owner or manager to ensure the safety of their customers and employees. You’ll have the regular hazards that are a fixture of running a kitchen and you’ll have the unknowns brought into your spaces by the public. A comprehensive risk management plan can help identify any potential hazards and allow you to develop strategies in advance to mitigate or remove them. 

As we continue, we will cover the importance of conducting regular risk assessments in restaurants and how Inform People’s compliance and performance management software can help you manage risks effectively.

If you are involved in the Health and Safety processes of managing restaurants, you have a legal obligation to ensure the safety and wellbeing of your staff, customers and contractors. Conducting regular risk assessments and safety audits is an essential part of this responsibility. 

Running a restaurant can be a complex task that requires a lot of attention to detail, especially when it comes to safety. One way to ensure your restaurants are safe and secure is to have the managers in your venues conduct regular risk assessments. These can range from daily food safety checklists, annual fire risk assessments or even ad-hoc inspections by Area Managers.

What is Risk Management?

Risk management is the process of identifying, assessing, and prioritising risks to minimise potential harm and protect your business. In a restaurant setting, risk management involves assessing potential hazards that could cause harm to employees or customers, such as food-borne illnesses, slips, trips and falls, fire hazards, and more. By identifying and assessing these risks, you can develop strategies to mitigate them and create a safer environment for everyone.

Restaurants Risk Management Checklist

To ensure comprehensive risk management, restaurants should follow a risk management checklist that includes the following steps:

• Identify risks: This involves identifying potential hazards and risks that could cause harm to any people in your locations.
• Assess risks: Once risks have been identified, they must be assessed to determine their potential impact and likelihood of occurrence.
• Prioritise risks: After assessing risks, they should be prioritised based on their level of severity and likelihood of occurrence.
• Implement control measures: Once risks have been prioritised, control measures should be implemented to mitigate them.
• Monitor measures: Control measures should be regularly monitored to ensure they are effective in mitigating identified risks.

Check out our previous blog about some of the biggest risks to keep your eye on in hospitality. 

How to manage risk in hospitality environments with Inform People?

Inform People’s platform can help you manage risks effectively in your restaurant by providing the following features:

Scheduled Audits

Give each type of checklist a duration and schedule – your auditors will come to know what to expect, keep their audit questions in mind during their role, and maintain better Health and Safety outlooks consistently. With regularity of completion, from central reporting you can also identify trends such as whether audits are being missed at a particular location more than others and get insights into which questions are ever marked as a ‘fail’ across the whole company.

Our scheduling feature also links into Location Attributes, meaning that if you have audits that only need to be completed at your restaurants that have outdoor seating or are in a shopping centre they can be scheduled only to be assigned to those venues.

Individual Accounts

Increase compliance accountability by having every single person with their own account on the system and a detailed activity record. Through this detail you will be able to assign audits only to those responsible for completing them, mark up any audit witnesses, and assign follow-on tasks that will appear as notifications for the relevant person. Avoiding account sharing makes your data more robust and reliable, you know who is doing what, when and where (and who isn’t!). 

Knowledge and Training

Inform People also provide an array of information sharing options that maintain access to all relevant information and ensure that everyone is up to date on procedures and compliance training. This ranges from simple documents to longer learning courses and tracking in-person event attendance. 

Where we come in…

At Inform People, we offer a comprehensive compliance and performance management suite of modules that can help you conduct paperless, tailored and scheduled audits, and use data insights and reporting to drive accountability, boost productivity, and create a positive safety culture in your restaurant.

Avoid incidents: By identifying potential hazards and risks, you can take proactive measures to avoid incidents, such as food contamination, slips, trips, and falls, and other safety hazards.

Drive accountability: By assigning tasks and responsibilities to your staff and tracking their progress, you can ensure that everyone is accountable for their actions and compliance.

Feel confident in your compliance: By maintaining accurate records of your audits, inspections, and corrective actions, you can demonstrate your compliance with regulations and industry standards and avoid costly fines and penalties.

Create a positive safety culture: By involving your staff in the risk management process, providing them with training and resources, and recognising their contributions, you can create a positive safety culture that promotes teamwork, communication, and continuous improvement.

Get in touch now via our contact form, directly via info@informpeople.com or give us a call on: +44 (0)161 713 4104