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Recording events

Most of what ends up in the diary gets there automatically - checklist completions, temperature readings, Prove It records and corrective actions all flow in as your team works. This page covers the bits you log by hand, and the design choices behind how SafetyBrik captures them.

Recording an incident or note​

To add a free-text entry:

  1. Open the day in the Daily Diary at /safety/diary/:date
  2. Scroll to Incident Notes
  3. Type into the notes box - things like "Fridge 2 reading 7.5C at 14:00, food moved to walk-in, engineer called, back in range by 16:30"
  4. Optionally tap Add Photo to attach up to five images (a photo of a delivery, a thermometer reading, a damaged box)
  5. Click out of the box to save - notes auto-save on blur

If a checklist already flagged something earlier in the day, you can use Generate AI Suggestion to draft notes from the activity summary as a starting point. Edit and confirm before signing off - the manager's words, not the AI's, are what go on the record.

Photos count as evidence

A clear photo of a fridge thermometer, a delivery temperature probe, or a damaged carton is worth more in an EHO inspection than a sentence describing it. Use the camera icon on a phone to capture in the moment.

Fitness-to-work: logged on exception​

The paper SFBB diary asks every staff member to declare daily that they're fit to work. SafetyBrik does this differently: fitness-to-work is recorded in the diary on exception only, not as a daily ritual.

You log a fitness-to-work entry when something actually changes:

  • A team member calls in sick
  • Someone is sent home mid-shift after reporting symptoms
  • A staff member returns to work after a stomach bug or other notifiable illness
  • Anyone declares an injury or condition that affects their work

This is a deliberate product design choice for three reasons:

  1. Less fatigue, more meaning. Tick-box daily declarations turn into noise within a week. The day someone is genuinely unwell is the day the record needs to be solid - and a week of "I'm fine" entries doesn't help an investigation, but a clear "Sarah went home at 11:30 with vomiting; cleared stations she'd touched; not to return until 48 hours symptom-free" does.
  2. Absences flow from StaffBrik. When a staff member is marked absent in StaffBrik, the absence already creates a record with a reason and dates. SafetyBrik leans on that data rather than asking you to type it twice.
  3. It matches what EHOs actually want. The expectation is that you can show what you did when someone was unwell - which dishes they touched, when they were sent home, when they were cleared to return - not that you have a stack of "I'm well today" tickboxes.

To log a fitness-to-work exception, use the Incident Notes box on the day in question. Be specific about who, what, when, and what action was taken (sent home, deep-clean of station, etc.).

Returning from sickness

The standard rule for foodborne-illness symptoms (vomiting, diarrhoea) is 48 hours symptom-free before returning to food handling. Record both the absence and the return-to-work date so the gap is visible.

Supplier and equipment issues​

Same pattern: type into incident notes with enough detail to reconstruct what happened. Examples:

  • "Delivery from XYZ rejected - chilled goods at 9C on arrival, rebooked for tomorrow"
  • "Walk-in fridge alarm overnight, reading 6C at 07:00, stock checked and within safe time, engineer booked"
  • "Probe thermometer dropped, calibration check failed, replacement in use"

Photos help here too - a picture of the delivery temperature reading or the faulty equipment is hard to argue with later.

How diary entries feed the 4-weekly review and Prove It​

Diary content isn't an end in itself - it's the raw material for two other things:

  • 4-weekly review. When you open the 4-weekly review, the auto-generated summary panel pulls counts straight from the diary: how many days were signed, how many corrective actions were taken, how many flagged readings occurred. The review then asks you to reflect on patterns: did the same problem appear three or more times?
  • Prove It. Diary photos and notes alongside checklist evidence build into the Prove It record - the proof you can hand an EHO showing your safe methods are followed in practice, not just on paper.

In short: a well-kept diary makes both the four-weekly review and an EHO visit much shorter conversations.