5 Ways To Make Your Store Safer

There is no shortage of challenges facing retailers today. With the increase of online shopping, retail stores are still struggling to keep their customers engaged. One way to do that is to create a safe store environment for both shoppers and employees. In this post, we’re going to cover five ways you can make your store safer.

Implement health & safety practices

Over the past few years, retailers have been required to take on greater levels of health and safety responsibility. This means that their responsibilities have shifted from being reactive (i.e., responding to an incident) to proactive (i.e., identifying issues long before they escalate into incidents).

The reason for this comes from a growing body of evidence and research that shows that businesses who use a proactive approach to health and safety issues are less likely to suffer the negative effects (i.e., damage to reputation, fines, lost productivity) associated with reactive approaches.

Conduct a safety audit

Safeguarding your retail store is key to preventing crimes like robbery and theft. If you own a retail establishment, having a safety audit conducted on your store should be an important part of your business strategy.

Often, this can be as simple as jotting down the job functions, and tasks employees perform, followed by a quick check to see whether each task is carried out safely or not. It could be a useful exercise for everyone to do, thinking about where particular dangers might lurk.

Have the right insurance cover

It’s important for retailers to secure their business and protect themselves using the right insurance. Public liability insurance is necessary to run a retail store. You can protect yourself against theft, severe weather, large purchases, accidents that happen in your shop and many other situations. Most importantly, this will protect your retail store from financial loss should a customer get injured in your store.

Train staff regularly

Retail staff need to develop the skills and adopt behaviours that will help them in future roles. They should be trained in all aspects of service. Retail staff should be regularly trained in retail trends and security trends. This will improve their ability to give better, more relevant customer service, thereby giving buyers a more positive experience, as well as helping to keep the store as safe as possible.

Put proper COVID-19 protocols in place

Finally, you should not run a retail store in these uncertain times of Covid-19 unless you have the proper protocols in place to protect your staff and customers.

 

COVID-19 protocol can vary from having to wear personal protective equipment such as facial masks and gloves to social-distancing requirements, restricting the number of workers in the shop at any given time depending on the store’s size, as well as how many people can gather in groups in some locations and how many customers can be served at any given time. COVID-19 procedures must be followed correctly in order for your retail store to be safe.