Set the example

So you walk through a food court in any shopping centre in the country and you will see staff in some food businesses wearing hair covering and not in others. If people working in a food business are not wearing hair covering, we all know that there will likely be hair found in the product at some point, right? Is a food business not wearing hair covering doing everything reasonable to prevent contamination? The answer is obvious – No it is not. If food factories are expected to wear hair nets or other suitable covering and get nabbed in audits if it is not happening, why isn’t the local takeaway? It seems a rule for one and not for the other. Why is it that Local Councils are not jumping on these businesses about this during the required annual inspections or Five Star type audits? But that is not the worst of this situation, in some of those food court businesses you see the staff doing the right thing and wearing some sort of hair covering, but the owner / manager isn’t. What is that all about? Does it mean that once you get to be a Manager or business owner, your hair doesn’t fall out?????? It is hard enough to get staff to come along on the food safety journey, it becomes even harder if they see that they are required to do something but their boss isn’t. It is about lack of respect by the Manager / Owner for both the staff and food safety itself. Staff will follow where they are led, if it is done the right way. An essential part of this is, that a rule applies to everyone regardless or what position they hold in a business. It cannot be “do as I say not what I do”. It is about setting the example for the staff to follow. Besides to the public, it just looks odd if there are some wearing the full uniform and others not, so as well as being a vital part of managing a business and it’s staff, it is also about the image of that business itself.