Posted By David Kimmins Aishling Keep it Simple, there are so many jobs and tasks in the retail environment . Being an engineer and having worked in high teach and high risk industries I want to do thorough detailed quantitive assessments and now working in the retail industry I realize qualititive risk assessments are more suited. Obviously you still need a way to rank risk, to prioritize your control efforts. Good luck David

Posted By Ron Hunter Then of course there's dry cleaners and petrol filling stations............

Posted By Stuart Nagle Aishling. My wife works in Tesco's stores and you would cringe if you heard some of the tales she tells about 'stroppy' customers. I for one would recommend staff security and protection from violent, drunk or drugged up, harassed and stressed out customers. Two weeks ago one of the checkout staff in my wifes shop (young lady of about 20) was punched full in the face and knocked to the floor by a customer for daring to ask for ID in respect of an alcohol purchase at a till...!! The 'customer' (thats not what I ******* called him I can tell ya!!) legged it through the nice big open doors near the checkout and got clean away.... other staff not realising what had happened until too late. In these locations staff have very little protection and response times from other staff in a busy area is often not as quick as it could be !! Stuart

Posted By Doug Russell Aishling I am the H&S officer for Usdaw the shop workers trade union. Keep it simple is good advice. There is some useful literature on the common H&S isues on the Usdaw website - http://www.usdaw.org.uk/...library/#HealthandSafety On safety its manual handling and slips and trips that are the main issues. Deliveries are also an issue - reversing lorries can kill people and overloaded roll cages falling out of lorries or off tail lifts tend to crush people as well. Roll cages generally are a problem. They may be an efficient way of moving high volumes of goods from warehouses to shops, but they are often overloaded or badly loaded, damaged roll cages don't get removed from use despite the use of tagging systems to identify faulty ones and a lot of the handling injuries are scrapes and cuts to hands and feet from trying to push or pull the things in restricted spaces. On occupational health musculoskeletal disorders usually associated with postural constraints e.g. at checkouts or when shelf-filling are the main issue. Stress is also an issue. Most of it is down to the public. Violence and verbal abuse are a serious problem for shop staff, which is why the Union has been running its Freedom from Fear campaign specifically on that topic - http://www.usdaw.org.uk/...library/#FreedomFromFear But working time can also be a source of stress - store managers and assistant managers often work 60+ hours a week despite the Working Time Regs On welfare, at this time of year unsurpsrisingly thermal comfort is a big headache. The HSE here in GB is promising some better guidance on the issue later this year. HSENI has some retail-specific guidance on its website and an annual report on enforcement activity by District Councils who are the enforcing authorities for retail Hope this helps. Doug Russell