Tips on Preventing Personal Injury in a Retail Store Setting
If you own or run a retail store, regardless of the size or purpose for it, you have a duty to your customers to make it a safe place for them to visit. Accidents occur each and every single day, but many of them could have been avoided by taking some simple steps to ensure the safety of your store.
Should a customer have an accident in your store resulting in injury, you could be held accountable for their accident if you have failed to maintain conditions reasonably safe. Therefore, it is in your interests to go the extra mile and perform regular maintenance checks on your store to ensure it is safe for anyone who should enter.
Here are some simple to tips for keeping your retail store safe for customers and avoiding unnecessary accidents.
Perform Regular Housekeeping Checks
Whatever kind of store you operate, spills are always a possibility. Whether you work in the food service industry and are at risk of customers spilling their drinks, or you work in a shopping outlet and a child has dropped their drink bottle, it’s important to take the time to do regular checks for anything that could potentially cause an accident. Any spills should be cleaned up immediately – the longer that it is left, the more potential there is for accident. And when you do clean it up, make sure to remember to leave a hazard sign close to the area to alert customers to the wet and slippery floor.
Perform Regular Building Checks
Some of the most common accidents occurring in retail stores are from faulty staircases, elevators or escalators. If your store contains any of these, it’s your responsibility to make sure that they are either 100 per cent functioning, or blocked from customer use. Additionally, if you have elevators or escalators in your store, it’s also vital that you provide adequate instructions on how to use them. It might seem obvious to most people, but it is all too easy for a customer to misuse the machinery and make a claim against you for not providing instructions on how to properly use it.
Provide Adequate Shelves for your Products
One of the simplest ways to keep your store safe is to make sure that none of your merchandise is at risk of falling on customers. If you’re finding that you’re over-stacking shelves to make room for new products, this is not the place to be lazy or stingy. Aside from endangering your customers, falling merchandise will also cause extra work for you in tidying up – so make sure you install sufficient shelving within your store.
Install Sufficient Lighting in the Parking Lot
Many accidents or incidents don’t actually occur in the store, but in the parking lot. And if the parking lot is included in the space of your property, it’s your duty to provide adequate lighting here. If a customer trips or falls on their way back from the store because they couldn’t find their way back to their car in the night in your parking lot, you could find yourself facing a premises liability claim.
