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THE HEALTH AND WELLBEING OF OUR RETAIL WORKERS Covid-19 has presented the greatest set of challenges that retail, indeed the entire country, has faced in living memory. It has cost lives across the world, thrown economies into recession and turned everyday life on its head. By National Retail Association CEO Dominique Lamb. Australian retailers of all shapes and sizes have tried valiantly to navigate stormy waters throughout the past few months, with many still only holding on due to assistance measures such as JobKeeper. However, confronting the sector is another challenge, which has often been overlooked: keeping the country’s 1.5 million retail workers safe and well. That’s why in August the National Retail Association (NRA) released our own research report, ‘Health and wellbeing of Australian retail workers’. The report includes analysis and data across areas affecting retail workers during the pandemic, including customer abuse, crime, exposure to anti-social behaviour, domestic and family violence, lifestyle choices and poor nutrition. The statistics were quite sobering. As we all know, the pandemic has at times led consumers to resort to panic buying, leading to busier than usual grocery stores and shoppers frustrated at seeing empty shelves. Unfortunately, this has resulted in substantially increased aggressive behaviour and abuse targeted at retail staff. Some retailers have reported increases of as much as 400 per cent in aggression and abuse following customer anger at restrictions. Meanwhile, retail crime has also been on the increase, with more than 85 per cent of surveyed retailers saying staff have experienced verbal or physical abuse while trying to prevent a crime. Furthermore, NRA research indicates that retailers are dealing with an increase of up to 300 per cent in drug-affected incidents in their stores or precincts. This has culminated in many business owners opting to employ security guards and crowd controllers to ensure behaviour is orderly and social distancing measures are followed. Domestic and family violence (DFV) is a serious issue across Australian society, with a clear demographic overlap of retail workers and those most likely to suffer from DFV. The NRA takes seriously its commitment to women (who comprise 55 per cent of the retail workforce). Some 100,000 retail workers are currently experiencing domestic and family violence, while up to 50 per cent of women who have experienced DFV say they have lost a job because of it, for example through absenteeism, lateness, reduced concentration and withdrawn or anxious personality responses. Lifestyle and nutritional choices within the industry have also worsened during the pandemic. Retail workers smoke at a disproportionate rate to the rest of the population, something only exacerbated by the stress of tense work conditions in recent months. The most recent Department of Health report on the nutritional levels of retail workers found that the sector’s workforce was overrepresented for inadequate fruit and vegetable intake and poor physical activity outside of work. This has an impact on work performance, with estimates that a poor diet can lead to up to a 20 per cent loss in productivity. So what are some initiatives that can be implemented to address the above problems? The NRA is advocating the following measures be adopted to improve the health and wellbeing of Australia’s second largest workforce: • Recognising and prioritising retail workers as frontline essential-service workers. • Government and law enforcement elevating crimes against retailers and their teams to serious crime, to reduce physical and mental harm, encourage workers to stay in the profession, and reduce costs on business. • Dedicating law enforcement resources to combat retail crime, increasing retailer confidence that police will respond, offenders will be prosecuted, and repeat criminals will be prevented from entry. • Strengthening laws and tools to ban abusive individuals from retail precincts, not just stores. • Strengthening government policy to establish better frameworks and monitoring of domestic violence, as well as harsher penalties for perpetrators. Victims of DFV need to have confidence that coming forward will be met with support and protection. • Introducing new strategies to combat smoking, such as exploring alternatives to traditional cigarettes, such as nicotine-based smoke-free products that are currently not legal in Australia. It remains to be known just how long we’ll be battling this pandemic and how long the economic recovery will be. Many things need to be done to keep businesses afloat and as many Australians employed as possible. It’s also important, though, that the appropriate support is provided to workers at the coalface of the challenges posed by Covid-19, which certainly includes the retail workforce. INDUSTRY INSIGHT The National Retail Association The National Retail Association (NRA) is Australia’s largest and most diverse industry association. The NRA is the only retail industry association to deliver practical legal advice through its wholly owned and incorporated legal practice, NRA Legal. 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