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One of the most anticipated and busiest shopping events of the calendar year is upon us – but how can retailers keep customers and staff safe? Ria Sooknarine GradIOSH, a member of the IOSH Retail and Logistics Group, looks at how to mitigate the risks.
Black Friday occurs on the day after Thanksgiving Day and marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. It is one of the most anticipated and busiest shopping events of the calendar year, with shoppers flocking to retail stores to grab deals on heavily discounted inventory items,
While this may be a revenue generating event for retailers, and a heavenly shopping spree for customers, it can become an apocalyptic nightmare if Black Friday risks are not effectively mitigated.
Some major retail outlets begin planning for Black Friday sales up to a year in advance. This is necessary as adequate planning is crucial to provide assurance that the sale event transpires seamlessly, without harm to people and damage to property.
Black Friday sales are synonymous with shopping frenzies where customers are in a hysterical state to grab sale items before they are sold out. This hysteria poses considerable risks that have led to serious injury and deaths resulting from:
- Stampedes
- Physical altercations
- Slips, trips and falls
- Being struck by falling objects
- Car accidents from drivers falling asleep behind the wheel due to exhaustion from all night shopping sprees
- Car accidents in retail carparks where aggressive drivers attempt to rush for parking spaces
- Armed robberies
Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, online shopping has gained prominence and with this comes yet another series of health and safety risks for retail workers. These include stress, duress from angry shoppers, and over-exhaustion from long shifts or inadequate staffing to facilitate timely deliveries for customer orders.
Regardless of the geographic location of these Black Friday sale events, employers have a duty of care to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of all their employees and anyone else who may be affected by their operations.
To keep health and safety a priority and to prevent Black Friday sale events from becoming hazardous, retail workers and shoppers can be protected if these risks are alleviated. The development and implementation of a Crowd Management Plan is instrumental in controlling these risks identified, and should include the following factors:
- Emergency Response Procedures to address identified risks and response, such as overcrowding, crowd crushing, violent acts, physical altercations and fire
- Mechanisms for crowd control by installing barriers or rope lines to prevent large crowds from rushing into the store
- Crowd control by restricting access to customers entering the store when it reaches maximum occupancy level
Employees must be trained in crowd management procedures and emergency response planning so that they are cognisant of how to effectively manage crowds and what to do when incidents arise. Adequate signage should be posted to identify emergency exit routes, which must always remain clear and unobstructed. The retailer’s staffing plan should include the number of workers required and the positioning of workers throughout the store, inclusive of trained security personnel or police officers.
US OSHA has published ‘Crowd Management Safety Guidelines for Retailers’ to assist in proper mitigation of crowd-related injuries. These include four (4) key areas: Planning, Pre-Event Set-Up, During the Sales Event and Emergency Situations. These guidelines can be found on the US OSHA’s webpage and are worth looking at.
The UK's safety regulator, the Health and Safety Executive, also has guidelines for crowd safety, including factors to consider when making a risk assessment.
From an occupational safety and health perspective, when compared to other sale events, Black Friday is busier and more chaotic, as it is the pinnacle of bargain shopping. Retailers lure shoppers into spending their cash with attractive and enticing promotional bargains. These low prices motivate shoppers to partake in Black Friday sales so that they can purchase merchandise that they would not ordinarily buy.
As people’s behaviour is unpredictable, meticulous planning is critical to curb any crowd control issues. This will result in a more organised and safer sale event.
