Everyone should feel safe while they’re at work. Whether they work in an office, factory or warehouse environment, employees should always be left feeling assured by the safe working practices you’ve put in place. Effective health and safety training will raise awareness of potential hazards in the workplace and what controls or standards must be used. This could be generated by creating a retail health and safety checklist focused on security and employee wellbeing.
However, for those working in retail, it seems as though satisfying levels of safety and security are often hard to come by. According to the British Retail Crime (BRC) Survey, there were 455 violent or abusive incidents a day between 2019/20, with total losses to crime at an astonishing £1.3 billion.
Prosecution of these incidents is only 6%, according to the survey.
When you consider the other common safety risks in retail, such as slips and trips or lone working risks, employers have an increasing awareness of their responsibility to improve the safety and wellbeing of their fellow employees and keep themselves protected. Employers can do this by creating a retail health and safety checklist that covers all the essential areas of working within retail.
Our IOSH Approved physical and verbal abuse, bullying and harassment awareness course aims to provide employees at all levels within an organisation with the essential information they need to understand accepted definitions, signs and symptoms that victims might display and what actions to take.
What is a retail health and safety checklist?
A retail health and safety checklist, in any format, is a collection of the essential health and safety policies and procedures retail workers need to be aware of in order to guard themselves against abuse and violence.
The checklist can be designed to offer support, guidance, and criteria for inspections and regulations.
Putting together a retail health and safety checklist
Here are some suggestions on how to create your organisation’s own retail health and safety checklist to protect your employees:
Identify the dangers
The retail sector has always been full of potential risks and hazards. The 2021 BRC report identified the following as the three biggest concerns amongst the retail industry:
- Violence against staff – nearly 7 in 10 (69%) placed this as their top threat. 88% of those surveyed placed it in the top 3.
- Theft by customers – over 80% put this in their top 3.
- Cyber attacks and data theft combined, along with fraud, burglary, and theft combined both surveyed at 44%.
For example, the manual handling involved with stock management can often result in minor injuries but significant lost time, while the responsibility of locking up at night can make workers a target for criminals. For those working at night, dealing with expensive goods or carrying large amounts of cash, these risks can be exacerbated.
You’ll need to identify the most significant risks through your retail health and safety checklist, then take steps to improve them. This could be achieved through risk assessment and health and safety arrangements. Or it could be achieved through a violence and conflict management policy. At Praxis42, we have a Conflict management and workplace violence guide available that you could use as a resource to design your own policy and what techniques and key legislation could be helpful.
At a strategic level, a violence and conflict management policy statement communicated to managers and employees can provide a level of confidence for all employees. Posting the retail health and safety checklist information in the store helps customers understand the organisation’s position. Local assessments help ensure that day-to-day arrangements such as cashing up and working alone are clearly defined for employees’ safety.
Increase security
According to the same British Retail Crime Survey, the retail industry spent £1.2 billion on crime prevention. However, with shoplifting rates rising, many of these costs seem entirely inefficient.
Modern businesses have to invest heavily in security, both in-person and online. With the proper security measures in place, you could stand to save significant amounts of money in the long run, but it is a balance. More importantly, tightening security might also help to keep your employees much safer and protect their wellbeing, with thieves and shoplifters typically deterred by the sight of a CCTV camera, physical security or a Security Industry Authority (SIA) guard.
Of course, the measures you decide to implement will ultimately depend on what your shop or outlet sells and the amount of risk involved. If you’re selling expensive jewellery or desirable technologies, for example, then you may want to assess:
- Controlled and secure access.
- Goods in secured display cabinets.
- Removing goods on show and use of shutters.
- Panic buttons and intricate alarm systems.
Sellers of less valuable goods may assess these features wouldn’t be necessary unless experience and an assessment of risk show otherwise. To minimise the risks, improving your store’s security is an effective way of helping to protect your employees and the goods they are selling.
Provide employee training
Although you might be fully aware of the risks and dangers of working in your shop or outlet, that doesn’t necessarily mean your employees know. They may need guidance on how to identify those same hazards or understand the expected behaviour, or the organisation’s policy, arrangements and controls.
Through relevant and approved employee training, you can teach employees how to spot the signs of danger in the workplace and show them how to manage and reduce risks.
If you’re serious about improving their safety and wellbeing, you need to make sure that all managers and employees are familiar with everything on the retail health and safety checklist. You also need to ensure they know about emergency arrangements, such as:
- How to put the store into lockdown if required.
- Deal with the escalation in threat.
- How to call on local support.
- Contact the authorities for assistance.
In the event of an attempted robbery, employees must understand local procedures and have learned good conflict management skills through training. This could help them defuse any potentially violent or escalating situations.
Our online IOSH approved Conflict Management course is designed to teach employees how to manage, cope, and de-escalate situations and provide them with a thorough understanding of how to recognise violence, harassment, and bullying in the workplace. Sign up your shop workers today to ensure they have the skills required to stay safe, or contact a member of our team to learn more about our other IOSH approved health and safety courses.
