Development and application of an innovative instrument to assess work environment factors for injury prevention in the food service industry.
Pia Markkanen, Susan E Peters, Michael Grant and 5 others
PMID 33612509WHAT IT FOUND
A new assessment tool combining manager interviews and site walkthroughs identified safety gaps in ten food service worksites.
Time pressure and client-vendor contracts were key barriers to fixing hazards, not just physical layout issues.
Key findings
01The assessment instrument consisted of a structured site manager interview and a worksite walkthrough, designed to be completed within two hours by staff without ergonomics expertise.
02Site managers reported that time constraints and business operation pressures were the most frequent barriers to participating in safety training and implementing ergonomic interventions.
03The vendor-client contractual relationship significantly limited the ability to implement safety improvements, such as replacing unsafe equipment or providing standing mats, because the client controlled the physical environment.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study was conducted in only ten worksites within one large multinational company, limiting generalizability to smaller or independent food service operations. Assessments were conducted on single days, which may not represent typical working conditions or hazards. The instrument did not cover all potential hazards, specifically excluding cuts, burns, fire safety, and repetitive motion risks like those assessed by the Rapid Upper Limb Assessment. Frontline workers were not interviewed using the same structured questions as managers, so their perspectives on safety culture and barriers were less systematically captured. The vendor-client relationship created significant variability in working conditions that made it difficult to compare sites directly.
Declared interests
The study was a collaboration between the Harvard T.H. Chan Center for Work, Health, & Well-being and a large multinational food service company. The company provided the worksites and participated in the instrument's design.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume this tool is validated for all food service settings or that it captures all injury risks. It explicitly excluded cuts, burns, and repetitive motion hazards, and was tested in only ten sites of a single large company.