Shopworkers entitled to Freedom from Fear

Incidents are up but support is here

USDAW surveyed nearly 2,000 people working in retail over the past 12 months and found that 92% had experienced verbal abuse. In addition, 70% of workers had been threatened, and a further 14% physically assaulted.

Despite these appalling figures, only one in five victims have reported the incident to their employer, which must change. We are working hard to identify why colleagues do not report abuse and want all colleagues to understand support is here for them.

Watch our video from Dave Richards, Total Loss Manager on what tips you can take in-store and the support we have from retail charity partner GroceryAid outlined by Susan Barguss, Head of HR for Food Retail:

Working together to minimise incidents

Our Loss Prevention Team is working hard to support our colleagues with the necessary equipment, continually reviewing state-of-the-art equipment, and bringing in third-party suppliers to help us target high incident areas.  

Dave Richards, Total Loss Manager, said, "It is appalling and a disgrace that people are abusing shop workers, particularly when we should all be working together to get through this pandemic. Our clear and defined objective at Midcounties is to ensure all our colleagues feel safe by tackling and highlighting that abuse is not tolerated.  To maximise the safety of our colleagues we have created some top tip videos to keep our colleagues safe so take time to watch them."