Bunzl Catering Supplies conducted comprehensive market research with operators across the hospitality, leisure, travel, healthcare, education, and contract catering sectors.
The survey looked to find detailed insight from operators into how they currently carry out Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) awareness training for employees, as well as evaluating their awareness of the new Classification, Labelling & Packing (CLP) legislation which came into force back in June.
The new CLP legislation has resulted in a change to the way pictograms are labelled that display hazard. Operators must now make sure employees are both aware and trained to recognize the new pictograms.
At the moment, nearly 40% in the contract catering sector carry out COSHH awareness training for new starters as part of the induction process in the first week of employment. 10% of those in the restaurant sector see the importance of carrying out training prior to the employee starting their work as well.
When asked how frequently COSHH refresher courses take place within the business, nearly 50% operating quick service restaurants answered every twelve months’, whereas 24% within the restaurant sector said every six months.
12% of those in contract catering said that they run refresher training only if there are legislation changes, whilst nearly 2% in the pub sector said only after an incident has occurred.
In terms of who’s responsible for delivering the training itself, less than 50% said they put it into the hands of their chemical supplier, with 29% of restaurants leaving the responsibility with unit managers. 12% of contract caterers use internal training departments and 6% of operators didn’t know whose responsibility it was.
Once training is completed, operators were asked how they record an employee has completed the training. Over 75% of operators in the restaurant sector still rely upon keeping a filed paper record on site. Quick service restaurants and contract caterers were the most technically advanced with 17% keeping an electronic record either on site or at a head office.
Operators were asked if they were aware of the new Classification, Labelling & Packaging (CLP) legislation, which was introduced in June and the new pictograms that display hazards. Around 60% of those in the restaurant sector answered that they were aware, whilst 40% of quick service restaurants answered that they weren’t.
58% of restaurateurs said that they had a plan to ensure employees are aware of the new hazard pictograms and 100% said that they would like receive a copy of the final report to see how their COSHH awareness training compares with others throughout the industry.
Bunzl Catering Supplies has a comprehensive e-learning website for operators which offers COSHH awareness training at www.cleanlinetraining.co.uk. It is a free e-learning tool, provided to the customers of Cleanline chemicals for regular cleaning tasks.
Updated COSHH awareness training is given to individual employees in under 15 minutes, through five detailed video modules. Completion of all five modules is rewarded with a certificate and automatically flagged to the administrator who can download and access reports in the admin section.
Here at Monthind we frequently operate in potentially hazardous environments, so we understand the importance of health and safety and is the centre of all our tasks. We also carry out COSHH assessments along with any other assessments we deem necessary.