Alarming trends in retail

2006 has been an interesting year for Connexion2 as we have noticed an interesting trend in the retail sector in their use of panic alarms. Historically many retails have acknowledged the need to protect workers and to give them an ability to raise an alarm. Most have satisfied themselves by fitting fixed 'under the desk' buttons which can be pressed in the event of a robbery or other situation.

This year however has seen a number of retailers review their risk assessment and realise that fixing a panic alarm to one location has its limitations. A number of retailers have suffered attempts to attack or hold hostage those staff who are keyholders. Known as 'tiger kidnap' this scenario is becoming more common with a keyholding member of staff being approached typically whilst opening or closing the store. Clearly a fixed panic alarm at the point of sale is of no use to the worker in such a scenario.

Retailers are also coming under pressure from the Police about the number of false alarms from fixed panic alarms. The challenge for the Police of course is knowing whether or not an alarm is real or false when raised? Most alarms simply deliver an alarm 'signal' and therefore there is no way of identifying whether this is real or false. More importantly, if real then how severe?

Identicom addresses both of these issues and in many cases is easier and more cost effective to install than having an engineer hardwire in a fixed button.

In the run up to Christmas more and more retailers will need to recognise the increasing risks their keyholding staff are facing. If tills are full and shelves stacked with highly desirable goods then these workers need to be better protected.

For more information on retail related issues visit USDAW and read about their freedom from fear campaign