Managing Temporary Workers During Sanitation

Hi everyone. We are a small re-packing facility and uses temporary workers sometimes when there is a lot of sales order. The workers are also responsible for sanitation at the end of the day too. After sanitation, our supervisor uses ATP swabs on all the tables to verify cleanliness the next day. Recently, the ATP test fails more often, because many of the temporary workers are not familiar with our sanitation procedure and often disobey directions from supervisors during sanitation. We have tried getting the supervisor to provide training to the temporary workers whenever there are new workers (different workers are sent to our facility every time). However, they would still use the same dirty clothes wiping everything they see without cares, or wiping the same area for half an hour using the same towel. Has anyone have similar experience? And what do you do to make sure sanitation is completed properly with the presence of temp workers? Thank you!!! 

Hello Stan,

Many of us have had to deal with similar from time to time. Unfortunately, the simple answer is not really an easy answer.

Temporary workers have to be trained to the same standards as full time employees. There are going to be hurdles, of course. But a lot of us use temp workers, so it's doable.

Let's address one issue I noticed with your post that you are probably already aware of:

We have tried getting the supervisor to provide training to the temporary workers whenever there are new workers (different workers are sent to our facility every time).

• Is the supervisor aware that it is his/her responsibility to properly train the temporary workers prior to allowing them to perform the sanitation task?
• Are supervisors held responsible when their supervised workers tasks are not completed to internal standards? 
• Are the temporary workers held responsible?
• Have you verified that the training being provided by the supervisor is adequate?
  • This might mean showing up when you know the temp worker is starting to actually watch a complete training of this task
  • This might mean staying over to watch the sanitation yourself, following along with a work instruction, and documenting deviations

Could you ask your temp agency to send you the same employees (the good ones). We have temp employees that stay with us for months. The 'bad' ones, we don't ask back.

Most of our supervisors are not timid. They won't take people doing the wrong thing. They are held responsible.