Retail Loss Prevention and the benefits to your business

Retail loss prevention should be dedicated to providing a safe environment for customers to shop and employees to work.

Many companies forget about how customer and employee accidents and injuries can negatively impact their profits. Several times have I visited stores where the owners or management aren’t really concerned with safety issues or don’t truly understand the impact of a customer accident or an employee injury.

Retail loss prevention has a big responsibility when it comes to safety. These professionals have the task of ensuring potential safety issues are identified and corrected as soon as possible. Issues such as merchandise in the stockroom and some areas of the salesfloor stacked closer than 18 inches to the fire sprinkler systems. In some locations, there are electrical paneling, and electrical related equipment stationed or stored in the backrooms. Merchandise should never be stored or placed any closer than 36 inches to these areas. Loss prevention should be concerned with correcting these potential safety risks.

I experienced an instance at a company I worked for where a number of violations lead to the injury of one employee and ended up costing the business hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills and fines. The store refused to make simple changes to policies pertaining to the use of trash compactors.

In this instance, an employee was sent into the compactor to dislodge an item. In a rush, the operator and employee did not enact the safety feature, and failed to notify others of what had happened. As a result, the employee in the compactor suffered a serious leg injury when the compactor was accidently restarted. Loss prevention responded to the incident and conducted an accident investigation.

Indeed, the employees were negligent and admitted that they were never properly trained on the use of this equipment, nor were they encouraged by members of management to be safe.

Retail loss prevention provides a great service to any retailer or business, whether it’s conducting investigations involving theft, or conducting accident investigations, retail loss prevention must always be focused on the goal of profitability.

For more information on loss prevention visit us at retail loss prevention  or call 1.770.426.0547