Company Profile
Every Little Helps When It Comes to Safety in Numbers
Why Tesco’s Supporting “Everyone, Every Day, Home Safely” Strategy Adds Up
The official definition of the proverb “There’s safety in numbers” is “a confidence derived from being in a group of people and how secure you feel about taking action as a result.”
As definitions go that really adds up when you review the unseen statistics behind the human stories at Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket, which true to its famous advertising strapline “Every Little Helps” has been on its personal odyssey to challenge the meteoric upward trajectory of violence and aggression that has blighted the entire retail landscape in the last three years.
The numbers speak for themselves as the industry statistics loom large and loud. According to the British Retail Consortium’s (BRC) latest crime study published in June 2022, retail workers were subjected to a huge rise in violence and abuse during the pandemic with incidents almost tripling from 455 per day in 2019–2020 to a staggering 1,301 in just one year.
Furthermore, this almost 200 per cent spike was concentrated in a significantly reduced number of stores and retail operations—predominantly food and grocery—because most non-essential stores were essentially mothballed and their staff furloughed as a result of COVID-19 restrictions during this period.
The survey highlights the unacceptable scale of violence and abuse faced by supermarket workers during the pandemic where 125 of the 1,301 daily incidents involved violence on top of the escalating aggression that included spitting, a very visceral and COVID-specific assault that left colleagues feeling visibly violated with many experiencing a negative impact on mental well-being.
In the report’s executive summary, the BRC reported, “This spike in incidents occurred while retail workers were on the frontline of the pandemic, ensuring people were able to buy food and other essentials throughout the biggest public health crisis of our time. While incidents of violence and abuse soared, only 4 per cent of incidents resulted in a prosecution, findings which may explain why three-in-five respondents described the Police response to incidents as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor.’”
While the figures make uncomfortable reading for the law enforcement and criminal justice system, extensive lobbying from the BRC and its members resulted in the UK Government including a provision in the Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Act that created a statutory aggravating factor to assaults committed against those “providing a public service or performing a public duty.”
While legislative changes create a framework for change, there is still work to be done in terms of raising awareness of the new aggravated offence and to advocate for retail crime having a higher priority in local policing strategies.
Highlighting the broader costs of retail crime, the BRC report said, “Retailers also need to play their part by ensuring that more of these incidents are reported, so that the Police have a true picture of the violence and abuse faced by retail workers. Alongside the huge emotional and physical impact on people, retail crime also bears a huge financial cost. The total cost of retail crime stood at £1.5 billion, with £663 million lost to customer theft and £715 million spent on crime prevention. This spending, while critical to reduce losses and protect colleagues, nonetheless contributes to higher prices for customers by pushing up retailers’ operating costs.”
Tesco’s Transformational Journey
Few retailers today are under any illusions as to their responsibility in managing the huge human and financial cost of retail crime, and Tesco has been setting out its strategic stall for the last few years under the stewardship of Head of Security Emma Swail and her team who have taken the business on a transformational journey of culture change and target-hardening that has made the estate—2,800 Tesco format stores and 700 One Stop locations collectively employing almost 300,000 colleagues—safer for colleagues and customers and less attractive to organised and opportunistic criminals.
Belfast born and bred, Emma talked about the embryonic changes during an interview with Loss Prevention Magazine Europe in the Summer 2020 edition when she said, “My team now partners with all of retail and distribution, and we look after everything from customer safety to fulfilment.”
She added, “It is about making the role more proactive and joining up the strategic thinking behind our security response. It’s no good having all the gear and no idea, which is why we have created roles such as a Culture and Capability Manager whose job it is to find solutions for what we need. It could be facing into issues such as homelessness outside our stores or managing aggressive shoplifters or the deployment of body-worn cameras, but it’s all part of this transformative journey.”
Emma continued, “It’s a structural change because shrinkage and security go hand-in-hand, with colleague and customer safety being our number one priority. This means we investigate every single serious incident and look at it from a 360-degree angle. This is where the SOC (Security Operations Centre) will come into its own.
“How we come out of COVID is one thing that concerns me but getting it right and keeping people safe is so important, especially when your decision affects 20 per cent of the UK population in any given week,” Emma said.
Built on Three Key Pillars
Winding the clock forward just over two years, Tesco’s transformational journey which is based upon three key pillars—better protection of colleagues and customers, securing stores while building safer communities, and continuing to change Tesco’s personal safety and security culture—is delivering some impressive figures through the creation of a better preventative infrastructure and target-hardening the estate, making it less attractive to the criminal fraternity and other non-paying customers.
In May 2020, Tesco was facing a 68 per cent increase in physical assaults, a 30 per cent hike in robberies, and 25 per cent more burglaries than the previous year. But the transformational journey, which has seen a significant increase in executive-approved investment, has resulted in a dramatic turnaround in fortunes.
The cash injection that has enabled this transformation, which is predicated and deployed on the basis of 80 per cent of the risk being focussed in one-third of the estate, has to date seen a strong return on investment (ROI). In the last financial year, the business has seen some real tangible results including 35 per cent of violent offenders arrested, a 16 per increase on the previous year when only 18 per cent were detained.
Tesco continues to invest in new target-hardening technology such as wheel-locking trollies to prevent push-out thefts that, according to an independent report by Professor Adrian Beck, is contributing to the equivalent of 4 per cent of stock loss across the entire grocery sector. In addition, all convenience stores have the new Door Access System with a select few having Colleague Safety Screens to protect employees serving in targeted tobacco kiosks.
The use of GPS trackers has led to 16 arrests in the first half of this year, as well as 13 arrests throughout last financial year, eight of which resulted in stock or cash recovery. In addition, five offenders were sentenced to a total of 30 years and nine months prison time, one of which received over 16 years for a violent, firearm-yielding robbery in West Durrington.
The first half of 2022 saw a 10 per cent reduction in burglary losses despite a 42 per cent increase in attempts. Related to this, the business saw a 20 per cent increase in smoke-cloak deployment which effectively disorientates intruders and helps facilitate their arrest at the scene, all of which added up to a 19 per cent increase in offenders being arrested during or after committing burglary incidents.
Protecting the estate, its colleagues, and customers around the clock is hardwired into the security team, and post-COVID it was decided not to resume the twenty-four-hour openings of all large stores across the UK. Now, only ten stores provide this level of access.
Three Years of Success
Two years on from the first interview with Loss Prevention Magazine Europe, Emma and her team have transformed the story she can now share across the industry. “When you look at the culture of three years ago, what I describe as the emotional bank balance was in deficit, but I am pleased to say we are now in credit,” she said.
“We have created a drumbeat of cultural change that is delivering better results because we have had our heads down to deliver better protection of our colleagues with more secure stores and communities by changing the culture to one of personal safety and security and supporting the message, ‘Everyone, Every Day, Home Safely,’” she added.
Colleague Protection
During 2022, Tesco has made a significant investment in the roll-out of body-worn cameras for security teams and colleagues with between two and ten video and audio-capturing devices per location across all format stores. Again, the numbers are impressive with the measures contributing to a wider sense of well-being, with 85 per cent of colleagues, according to a twice-yearly colleague engagement survey, feeling their safety is taken seriously at work.
This protection goes right across the employee spectrum from delivery and fulfilment with enhanced care for the “stores on wheels,” the fleet delivering online groceries that are all fitted with four-way CCTV cameras while they are on deliveries often to multi-occupant locations, which means having to leave vans unattended and vulnerable to opportunist theft.
In-store, the colleague safety screens deployed because of COVID-19 have been replaced with purpose-built security screens in thirty-eight convenience stores and 120 Tesco filling stations as they afford both a sense of protection and one of prevention, while exterior ATMs were also target-hardened, with further deployment of this kit scheduled into this financial year.
The business also rolled out the deployment of DNA “spit kits” allowing colleagues to capture visceral evidence of their assault, a cost-effective solution that has also proved a success. “We’ve seen success with the spit kits where colleagues have removed it from their person and captured it ready for one of the Police forces to collect the evidence,” said Frazer Clark, UK Security Operations Manager for Tesco.
“It was introduced as a measure during COVID because it became an issue at many stores with colleagues being targeted in this way—it was definitely the right thing to do at the time,” he explained. “It was always there as a support for colleagues who wanted to take the matter forward, and 60 per cent have. We have seen results with the DNA being able to identify the individual, and successful prosecutions have followed.”
Safer Stores and Communities
Not all crime takes place during trading hours, and COVID witnessed an uptick in burglary attempts, so stores underwent security makeovers with 524 additional target-hardening assets deployed to 204 stores during 2020–2021 with plans for a greater roll-out throughout the remainder of 2022 and into next year. Anti-social behaviour, a long-term scourge of both Tesco supermarkets and its convenience formats, has also been targeted with highly visible and mobile CCTV vans making their presence known outside high-risk locations.
Impactful signage concerning security measures is also highly visible across the estate while remote locations have utilised and deployed the Dalek, a highly effective RoboCop-type, tripod-mounted technology linked to the SOC that is comprised of CCTV and audio warnings, as well as smoke-cloak deployment to deter unwelcome guests when the security of a store has been compromised by, for example, a burglary. This replaces the need for human manning of a compromised site overnight and thus reduces any risk to colleagues.
Guarding
One of the biggest initiatives has been the collaborative guarding “transformation” roll-out utilising what Joe Rutlidge, Tesco’s UK Guarding and External Partnerships Manager, describes as a “flexible, sustainable value-for-money proposition supported by technology and centrally managed.”
One of the lessons learned from COVID-19 has been the chronic security personnel shortages across the retail sector as a whole, and the Tesco model transformation, designed in collaboration with its third-party security partners, represents a more risk intelligence-led and integrated solution working closely with store teams, local communities, the Police, and the Tesco SOC.
In terms of personnel retention, it offers better prospects and security and, importantly, a progression path that provides bespoke training on top of the industry-accredited security qualifications.
“We don’t want to lose colleagues or security officers, and we want them to progress within the security industry. This is all down to partnerships with our third-party guarding teams. It’s a two-way street as well—we challenge them all the time, but they also challenge us, and this communication makes it work,” said Joe.
“As well as uniforms with body-worn cameras and a mobile flexible response guarding solution, we have created our own dedicated training package with every officer going through additional training to receive our own newly accredited qualification,” he added.
“We coach all our security teams in expected behaviours as well as criminal and civil law, which means they are well-equipped to be both proactive and reactive and able to fulfil their roles in-store or as mobile officers, ensuring that every store across the Tesco estate has access to a security officer when needed. This is done via a digital radio where stores can communicate with security and local stores to ensure that we are proactive with incidents. Previously, we only had guarding provision for 60 per cent of the estate, now we can offer it to all stores.”
He added, “As a result of guarding transformation, we have better coverage, increased KPI scores, great feedback from our retail teams, and a reduction in incidents across our estate.”
Training and Culture
As already outlined, Tesco’s highly visible presence across the UK has made it an easy target for unacceptable incidents of violence and aggression pre-COVID, during, and post-pandemic, but part of the business transformation has been around conflict management and avoidance rather than confrontation with shoplifters or angry customers.
As a result, diffusion of situations before they become confrontations is now part of the Tesco culture. As Emma explained, “We have started that drumbeat of different behaviours, but it can be a challenge for colleagues to unlearn twenty years of chasing after shoplifters and adding to the conflict just to retrieve a bottle of vodka. We have had to unravel that thinking and approach it differently through rewarding good behaviour through our S.T.A.R. (See, Think, Act, Report) programme.”
Every incident is fully investigated to ensure that colleagues have followed the procedures to reduce incidents, whether it is a conflict situation, or in the case of theft, a kiosk door left unlocked, all of which is to make sure lessons are learned.
Emma Keating, Tesco’s UK security, culture, and capability manager, added, “Our colleagues are highly trained on how to diffuse conflict situations, but it is also bottom-up in the sense that we ask colleagues what they could have done differently, coaching and changing that behavioural pattern as we go. This approach has helped us to be agile and responsive to the ever-changing situation within our communities.”
Moving forward, Tesco is separating out colleague safety and guarding preventability to enable the full ownership of the numbers between retail and security. In addition, it will carry out personal safety cultural reviews targeting high-risk locations and putting those colleagues through a collaborative series of engagement sessions.
Colleagues are being upskilled, and 4,576 team managers and shift leaders have so far been trained using shrink and security upskill sessions where the focus is on safety. In addition, colleagues are attending conflict-management workshops to provide coaching on how to safely de-escalate conflict situations. This has been led by Tesco’s field security team members who have recently qualified as BTec Level 3 conflict-management trainers.
Guidance has been produced for stores facing issues related to homelessness outside or near stores, and both external and internal communications tools have been reinforced to ensure message alignment and transparency.
Colleague engagement surveys suggest the new top-down, bottom-up approach is working with 85 per cent of colleagues, many of whom also have access to body-worn cameras, making them feel safer because of the changes.
A Total Team Effort
Tesco is one business trying to do its bit to protect staff—every little helps—but it can’t manage it alone. “We are doing everything we can to protect colleagues,” said Emma Swail. “We have a great team passionate about what they do, and this is a passion that runs from the top of the business to the shop floor and through all the stakeholders. We have started the journey and we will continue to re-energise that programme every year. We can never rest on our laurels, but we have the right people to drive it forward.”
As the UK’s largest supermarket, Tesco understands what safety in numbers means but also the pragmatic steps required to manage the symbiosis between protecting its people, property, and profits in the post-COVID inflationary world of rising prices and a cost-of-living crisis that is creating its own tensions across its multi-format stores or its “shops on wheels” delivery vehicles. It has done its sums in recognition of the fact that while behaviours can be learned and unlearned, this is easier to achieve when good practice is recognised in the broader context of a fully developed security strategy that all adds up to better business protection and staff retention.
