Would any kind person be able to list the 10 most common aspects of H&S in retail shops (working at height, aggressive members of the public, Fire plan etc)?

Thank you for your time and any help is much appreciated.

Mike Larry

Thanks Safety Smurf.

I had a few of the above, especially Manual Handling. I thought dealing with the public (abusive customers, shoplifters) would have been high up on the list.

I can't see a large amount of hazards compared to the construction industry, for example.

Any other contributions?

What training courses are common?

http://www.hse.gov.uk/risk/casestudies/index.htm

You don't say what sort of retail environment or what size?

In my experince

Pet Shop - Hamsters = no 1 hazard
Sweet Shop - Eating too much stock = No 1 hazard

The possibilities here are vast. Mike, can you narrow the field for us?

Ok Mike,
That makes it a bit easier to visualize. Is this a chain or an independent? and are we concerened about store level or company wide if its a chain?

If you have glass fronted windows/doors you would need to include decals to prevent people walking into them. I guess slips and trips would be an issue (especially near the entrance if coming in off the street). Fire exits, DDA, CCTV surveillance would all need to be considered.

I would put cash handling (links into agression and customers) in the top ten, but would agree with the others on Fire, asbestos, handling, transport plans for deliveries (and in the warehouse if one is attached), S&T, maintenance of stores during open hours (I once investigated a lady who fell down an open cellar hatch during some maintenance).

Hey! those leather elbow patches look really distinguished!

Sales signs will be hanging overhead, displays stacked high, unsafe and blocking fire escape routes, etc

You will also find that if the marketing bods are in charge of actually putting up the displays they will probably give no thought to their safety whilst they do so - imagine them balancing on top of several boxes to get the look they want etc. Trust me, I have a marketing background.

It's these finer details that are specific to the shop/retail sector I am after, thanks people!

What common control measures are there?

I meant 'fare' not 'fair'.

I work in retail and I can tell you the top 6 risk rated activities for our business. Not through guess work, but because our risk assessment process has delivered meaningful results - for us. But as several responders have already said, it depends on what you are doing as a business. Our number one is home delivery of outsized items. Freezers etc. Number two is pedestrian access of vehicle operating areas (VOAs).

Exposure to violence and aggression doesn't even make the top ten for us. Now if we were an all night off licence or similar, that may be a different story. I know from colleagues in the retail sector, that electronics stores that have direct access from the street get hit really badly with the threat of violence in 'grab it and run' type crimes. Including use of firearms. Our stores are not laid out like that and it would take you all day to grab enough lipsticks to make it worth the hassle as that is what you'd get straight off the High Street entrance.

However, the question was about hazards, not about the levels of risk associated with performing a task involving the hazard. It's interesting but we have found that customers have utterly different accidents to our staff. We have 70,000 staff and there is barely an instance of them tripping over displays, falling on escalators, walking into pillars etc. However, customers seem to find new and inventive ways of injuring themselves on our premises that we actually find very difficult to predict without hindsight. We tend to look at using risk assessment as a tool to identify problems in staff activities and more basic hazard control to help customers not to injure themselves.

Floor surfaces tend to contribute to customer accidents; there is a tight balance between aesthetics, wear-ability, hygiene and grip. It's not usually grip that wins the day.

Manual handling of 'something' is probably the single biggest thing that a retail employee does in their day. This is very difficult to condense into a quick response, but is a major issue for most retailers. You might walk out with one coat, but the employee will have ten coats over their arms, despite there being a hanging garment rail to use.

You have to distinguish between transient hazards (the banners falling on people's heads) and the everyday, repeated exposures that constitute peoples' jobs.

For us it's
Handling really big things
Vehicle / pedestrian separation
Handling per se of everything that isn't really big
Driving on company business (grey fleet stuff)
Customer access of buildings and movement around our stores
and, quite specifically, customer use of escalators.

The rest is simply no where near as much a problem.

But as a retailer, I presume that you would also have, distribution, warehousing, vehicle maintenance operations, leisure functions etc. Trust me the safest place to be is on the shop-floor. It's behind the scenes that the real issues lie.

Hope you come over to the retail sector, it's quite a challenge. Although my mantra is 'remember that we're a shop, not an explosives factory!'

C

Mike, they are are our top six 'radar' in other words our risk register, but they are not high risk. They are medium risk. The top six is made up of three high risk activities and then three medium risk activities/ Last year is was higher, but due to concerted action and involvement of the board, we are getting things down ore to medium across the whole register. It will take time but we are tacking the right things. We can't control the people who come in, easily, but we can and do control the hazards. Think about it. If we open our doors and let the elderly and children into our stores and the environment constitutes high 'risk' then what are we saying? It's not safe to come in? We don't work on lists of hazards really as it doesn't give any context. Like electricity for example. What electricity - where? Our customers are not expected to come into contact with that. If they did, we would most likely be able to show that they did something unforeseeable. And this is not something that we are obliged to necessarily to predict.

There isn't anything in our view that, reasonably, constitutes a hazard with a reasonably foreseeable high outcome for them. Falling over is pretty common as I indicated, but this would not be classed as high hazard outcome. Similarly, the controls in place mean that these incidents do not have a high likelihood of occurrence either. So anyway we cut it, coming shopping is not a high risk activity (maybe to your wallet!). If it were it would up there with entry into confined space, with hazardous atmosphere, whilst wearing tee shirt and flip flops after a crate of Stella and smokin' a fag. See the point? Shopping is not dangerous, generally speaking.

Don't be so sure that all of the necessary risk assessments etc WILL be in place. Retail is seen as low risk, by retailers and therefore the attention to safety and necessary documentation, systems, training etc is seen as non profitable and therefore can be pretty lax. If you want to talk privately on this, just PM me. I work along side pretty much all of the big names on the High Street.

J

A normal retail company will consist of:

Shops, head office and Distribution centres?

Hiya Mike - if you wish to drop me a line off the forum I may be able to help you. I work in retail and have the responsibility for all arrangements from staff, to re-fits & new builds.