Employee protection in the supermarket – Do we care enough?

cover: vchal / shutterstock.com

Recently I was talking to an acquaintance.  We were talking about how we could sustainably improve our business and he said a sentence that I thought about for a while later… “We need to take care of our employees so they can take care of our business and our customers”.

Now when I think of changes in the supermarket, I see hip chocolate 🍫, poppy drinks 🥤 and food-to-go in a glass 🥡. But what has changed from the employees’ point of view?

Are we taking sufficient care of our employees?

Spontaneously, ergonomic chairs in the checkout area or lifting and carrying aids for sorting products come to mind. But what about the areas that a supermarket customer doesn’t even see? Don’t we all want fresh goods on the shelves? Exactly! And for that we need large freezer rooms.

The strict regulations and laws in German occupational health and safety as well as modernizations in recent years have greatly improved working conditions in this environment. But it is still cold and dangerous, and the previous protective measures do not adequately protect against employee illness and accidents. The most common reasons for this are slippery conditions due to ice and snow formation and hypothermia of the body.

Due to the icing of the technical components as well as the environment, there are frequent and unplanned breakdowns, so that repair and cleaning work has to be carried out by the staff. This process often lasts from several hours to days, so that staff have to work for long periods in temperatures as low as -18°Celsius. Besides falls, peritonitis is one of the most common illnesses among supermarket staff. 🤕

Now what if we could shorten the time of these jobs?

Exactly – our employees would be better protected against illnesses and accidents, their well-being would increase and absenteeism would decrease. And all this in turn means that there is more time for our customers again.

If the well-being of your employees is also important to you, we would be happy to show you how you can easily achieve this. 📲