STAFF SAFETY
Safety is a key concern for employees, which could lead to further recruitment crises. Could employers be doing more?
A landmark study into perceptions of personal safety at work has revealed that 6.8 million workers worry about their safety each week, while most employers are underestimating the level of concern.
The research, commissioned by Peoplesafe, the UK’s leading provider of employee protection services, has also highlighted that safety challenges are particularly prevalent across the retail and hospitality sectors. 68% of employees worry about facing aggression from customers in the workplace, while one in four retail and hospitality workers worry about their general job place safety at least once a week.
Abuse in the retail industry continues to rise with over a million incidents of verbal abuse reported in the latest ACS Crime Report and 40,000 violent incidents estimated in the sector. Workers are reporting that these types of negative experiences are contributing to their decision to leave a job. In the last five years, concerns about personal safety (either a general feeling or because of a specific event) played a role in 22% of front line and lone workers leaving.
One female survey respondent (age 35-44) says: “I work in retail and our company has cut staff hours so much that we now have to lone work for part of the day, usually at the end where it’s dark and quite deserted outside. I hate this part of the day as I feel very unsafe on my own, especially when locking up and leaving.”
As policy makers and businesses across the UK face a recruitment and retention challenge in front line roles, employee safety, including perceptions around safety and employee peace of mind, are very real barriers. And although the study found that many businesses want to do more to protect their employees, almost half are struggling to understand how they can help.
£175 million has been invested in crime prevention in the past 12 months with each store spending over £3,500 on crime prevention measures, on average. The top areas of investment are CCTV, security guards and intruder alarms. But how much are these initiatives improving the feelings of staff safety?
Two in three employees say there are one or more safety mitigation options that are not available to them that their employer should implement. Employees also tended to support the introductions of solutions that let people know if they are at risk and alert someone who can help. All the top four solutions (buddy system, employee safety monitoring system, checking in protocols and GPS tracking) highlighted by employees reflect this, in contrast to processes or wider passive monitoring (such as CCTV) that score lowly and are often in place already.
Providing this kind of support service for staff may not only improve retention rates but can also make a significant difference in terms of general staff wellbeing and productivity. Focusing on employee safety is an untapped recruitment and retention tool that has the potential to make a big improvement to the way staff feel about coming in to work.
From the 2021 USDAW Annual Survey, 46% said they were not confident that reporting abuse, threats and violence would make a difference. Personal safety alarms could be the solution that makes a real difference with audio evidence recorded from any SOS alarm raised being admissible as evidence for prosecution and the ability to summon a level 1 police response via URNs direct to police control rooms.
By shifting the dial on the importance of personal safety, employers may fair better in the current recruitment crisis, as there is clearly a tangible benefit to employee peace of mind as well as physical safety and to the perception they have of how they are valued.
The survey was conducted with 2,081 non-vulnerable and potentially vulnerable workers. Click here to download the survey report.
