Checking your food handler's skills
A food business manager must ensure that food handlers and supervisors have the skills and knowledge in food safety relevant to the work they do.
Public health officers may assess the food safety skills and knowledge of food handlers when doing a food safety inspection in your premises.
Testing food handler skills
Check if food handlers are carrying out food safety practices by observing them at their work.
For example, observe if they use the hand washbasins for hand washing only and not for other purposes such as washing utensils. If practices are incorrect, train them in the correct practices.
It is more difficult to check knowledge because the food handler may be doing an action incorrectly for several reasons.
The food handler:
- may not know it is incorrect
- may have forgotten
- may know how to do it correctly but think it is not important to the business
Check that food handlers know and understand why a practice is necessary.
Ask your food handlers some questions to check their food safety knowledge. You can use the skills and knowledge checklists in the guide below for each of your staff. You may need to customise the checklists to suit your particular food operations.
Discuss the results with your staff and agree on any actions. If you think a food handler needs more skills or knowledge, arrange training. Keep the checklists to record your actions and to demonstrate to public health officers that you are meeting your legal responsibilities.
Download the Food Safety is Your Business guide.
Options for training
If your food handlers require more training, or refresher training:
- Someone on your staff could instruct or train your food handlers.
- You may have a staff member who has qualifications in food safety, supervising food safety or similar from the Canberra Institute of Technology or other registered training organisation, locally or interstate. Alternatively, you may have a staff member who has no formal qualifications but has the skills and knowledge to teach others.
- Someone could undertake training and then train others in the business.
- You could arrange for someone to attend a course on food safety and a course on how to train others.
- A registered training organisation could arrange a course specifically for your business, either on-site or locally.
- There are several organisations that will deliver on-site training.
For information on training:
- check online or the Yellow Pages for training providers
- contact the Canberra Institute of Technology
You can download and print the training record to record the training carried out by you and your staff.
Download the Food Safety is Your Business guide.