Staying compliant in a constantly changing regulatory environment

Internal standards are a challenge enough for QSRs, but when you factor in compliance with government regulations and other external standards, the task can become even more daunting.

From staying up-to-date on the latest health and safety procedures to ensuring that customers are satisfied with their experience, QSRs have to be on top of a lot of moving parts. Government policies and regulations can change quickly, and it's important for QSRs to be able to adapt just as quickly.

Operations manuals are a businesses best friend when it comes to maintaining external standards. Having a Single Point of Truth (SPOT) for everything related to external standards can help keep things consistent across a restaurant network and improve compliance.

In this article, we'll take a look at the importance of operations manuals and how they can help QSRs maintain external standards. We'll also touch on some other important aspects of maintaining compliance, such as auditing, external surveys, and incident management.

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External standards: why operations manuals are key

Operations manuals are a crucial part of maintaining external standards for QSRs. They provide clear and concise instructions on how to do things, from opening the restaurant in the morning to closing up at night.

Operations manuals can also help your team to keep on top of changes in government regulations. By having a SPOT for all things related to external standards, QSRs can quickly and easily update their operations manuals when changes occur, notifying your team of the changes instantly.

Not only do operations manuals help QSRs stay compliant, but they can also improve the overall efficiency of the restaurant. By having clear instructions on how to do things, employees can spend less time trying to figure out what needs to be done and more time actually doing it.

Ideagen Op Central, a cloud-based operations management platform, helps QSRs streamline the process of creating and maintaining operations manuals. With Ideagen Op Central, QSRs can create custom operations manuals for each of their locations and easily update them when changes occur.

"We work with a lot of multi-unit quick-service restaurants, and one of the biggest pain points they have is keeping their operations manuals up-to-date," says Sue Foley, Head of Growth at Ideagen Op Central. "With our platform, they can quickly and easily create custom operations manuals for each of their locations. And if a change needs to be made, they can simply update the manual and push it out to all of their locations with the click of a button."

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Auditing, external surveys, and incident reporting

In addition to having operations manuals, QSRs should also have processes in place for auditing, conducting surveys, and reporting on incidents.

Auditing is an important part of maintaining compliance with government regulations. QSRs should have regular audits of their OH&S, quality control, and retail compliance procedures. These audits can help identify areas where improvement is needed and ensure that QSRs are meeting all of the necessary requirements.

External surveys, such as customer or supplier feedback forms, can also be helpful in assessing a QSR's compliance with external standards. By collecting feedback from those who interact with the QSR on a regular basis, you can get a better understanding of how your locations are doing in terms of meeting these strict external standards.

Finally, incident reporting and management is a crucial part of maintaining compliance. QSRs should have a system in place for quickly and easily reporting on incidents, such as injuries, accidents, and near-misses. These reports can help you to identify areas where improvement is needed and take steps to prevent future incidents from occurring.

Ideagen Op Central's platform also helps QSR businesses of all sizes with auditing, conducting surveys, and managing and reporting on incidents. With Ideagen Op Central's auditing features, QSRs can easily track and manage all audits, surveys and incidents in one place. The platform uses data from audits to generate custom reports that can help QSRs identify areas where they need to improve.

Key features of Ideagen Op Central's platform include the following:

• Staff engagement surveys: identify areas of disengagement and take action to improve employee morale.
• External surveys: collect feedback from customers, suppliers, and others to assess compliance with external standards.
• Incident management: ensure incidents are reported on quickly and easily, and track and manage incidents in one place.
• Recurring tasks: create tasks that need to be completed on a regular basis, such as daily OH&S checks.
• Multi-lingual support: forms, audits, checklists, and reports are automatically translated into 100+ languages.

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Final thoughts

Operations manuals, auditing, external surveys, and incident reporting are all important parts of maintaining compliance with government regulations. QSRs should have processes in place for each of these things in order to ensure that they are meeting all of the necessary requirements. Ideagen Op Central's platform can help QSRs with all of these things, and more.

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Written by: QSR Media

Check out the Ideagen Op Central and QSR Thought Leadership Centre