New survey asks retail workers: how safe do you feel at work?
Many retail roles involve working alone for parts of the day: night shifts, opening or closing a store alone, handling cash, and dealing directly with the public.
For a lot of people in the sector, personal safety is not something that can be taken for granted, and it can shape the decisions they make about their jobs.
Peoplesafe, the lone worker safety technology provider, has launched a short survey to find out how feelings of safety affect people working in retail. It asks whether workers have ever turned down a shift because they felt unsafe, refused a job because the journey to or from work felt risky, or changed how they work in other ways because of safety concerns.
The survey also explores how safe people generally feel while carrying out their role, what has made them feel unsafe, whether they have reported concerns to their employer and how satisfied they were with the response, and what would help them feel safer at work.
The findings will feed into a wider piece of research into the organisational impact of employees feeling unsafe at work, looking at what safety concerns mean for wellbeing, productivity, and staff retention across the retail sector. For retail employers, the results should offer a clearer picture of how safety concerns are affecting frontline teams, and where practical support is most needed.
Retail workers are invited to share their experiences. The survey takes a few minutes to complete, responses are anonymous, and it closes on 11 September.
