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THE COVID PANDEMIC
Covid pandemic has settled down as retailers quickly found ways
to overcome the crisis with new safety precautions and
guidelines to follow. The response was two years in the making
as state health experts’ regulations had retailers set down
safety guidelines for customers to follow. Ideas such as washing
hands, limiting the amount customers in a store at one time,
plastic barriers for cash transaction, one way aisles for in
store traffic patterns and much more to curb the crisis. Some of
these suggestions remain currently even with the crisis behind
us. Why did covid get immediate attention and existing store
safety rules remained unattended.
As a Retail Store
Designer for 50 years, I traveled America and continue to,
visiting different retailers, and learning their safety
procedures. The more I travel the more I experienced that
corporate, who generates the new employee safety manuals and
plan-o-grams, failed to follow up at store level to ensure that
some corporate regulations were, in fact, being followed.
There needs to be a
new emphasis on how and why the store needs to pay as much
attention on store safety as they do on the pandemic and
inventory control. Loss prevention employees at store level
spend their time tracking down customers who steal product. The
simple math is that they saved the store a few hundred dollars
when at the same time a hazardous safety condition allows to
remain in the store that could potentially cost the store
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
There has always been
a misperception between the Corporate home office (Ivory Tower)
and their store staff (Field Personnel) brought on by a lack of
understanding for each other’s concerns. Each group pointing a
finger at the other to place blame when something goes wrong. I
understand the complexities between the Corporate home office
and the store, but that “tug of war” does not work well for the
retailer when a customer loses their eyesight, use of limbs or
even death because of not enforcing the safety regulations.
The corporate
employee’s regional manager act as the liaisons between
corporate and the store. The regional manager does a great job
in clarifying the safety regulations that corporate provides for
the store in the safety manual prior to the regional manager
leaving the store. The manager and regional manager agree that
the safety regulation will be implemented daily. Every safety
measure printed in the safety handbook must be precisely
followed or the field needs to provide suggestions to be
followed unless the store’s condition and staff level do not
allow. The field personnel and regional manager need to provide
suggestions to the corporate regulator to make the safety rule
relevant to that stores condition. As a Retail Safety Expert
Witness, I have been asked to opine on over 500 cases for
Plaintiff and Defense Attorneys. I find that the above is
typical of many retail chains and the actual cause of retail
incident if not implemented.
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