Employers sometimes fret over the cost of preventive safety measures: Was it worth hiring extra personnel to prevent an injury that might not have happened anyway? Was it worth installing extra equipment to control a hazard that workers encounter only once or twice a year?
 |
But sometimes employers don’t implement simple, inexpensive measures that could protect workers from high-risk exposures. In a recent study, researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) found that convenience store owners in Texas did not put in place some basic workplace violence prevention measures.
The retail industry’s leading cause of occupational fatalities is robbery-related homicide and assault, so discouraging robberies should be a high priority in the industry. Best-practices guidelines are available, including the Crime Prevention through Environmental Design guidelines (CPTED), published by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance.