Ways Grocery Stores Can Ensure Employee Health and Safety

Businesses need healthy, happy employees to get the job done. Staff who are sick will either stay at home or come in and infect others—either way, they compromise your store's health and decrease productivity. Whether your grocery store is open as an essential business during COVID-19 or you simply want to protect the general well-being of your staff, here are a few of the best ways grocery stores can ensure employee health and safety.

Provide Education and Resources

Providing education is one of the most important preventative measures a company can take to protect all staff's health. Though many people learn about disease transmission and healthy habits, you should also teach your employees about the essential ins and outs of how illnesses work and how they move from person to person. Your effort to share these details will make staff more aware of how they act and how customers behave, ultimately leading to an all-around healthy environment.

During this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, you should post resource sheets explaining the latest recommended public health strategies. Information about everything from social distancing to hand sanitizing should be fully available to staff. You should also encourage staff to stay home when they feel under the weather. And when at work, they should wash their hands thoroughly and frequently. You can even place placards in the bathrooms to encourage these practices. The more resources you provide, the more educated your workforce will be and the safer your grocery store will become.

Make Cleanliness a Priority

Cleanliness is vital at any store, but especially a grocery store where people purchase their food and basic necessities. Because many of the items you sell will go directly from your shelves to their stomachs, you must have safe cleaning practices. Make cleanliness a priority and implement daily cleaning routines to protect staff and consumers alike. From tasks like mopping to targeted approaches like mask wearing, you can make a difference in your business's health culture.

When anyone enters your store, be sure they have proper masking and offer clean masks to those without them. Always ensure there is soap in your bathrooms and hand sanitizer around the store. This will keep germs from spreading by hand contact with infected surfaces. You should also dust and disinfect surfaces daily to reduce germ buildup. You must wipe down everything from shelving units to cash registers. Don't let your staff get away with careless cleaning, especially when it helps them stay safe as well.

At checkout, be sure you use a high-quality sneeze guard frame that maintains a safe distance between your staff member and the customer. This measure of protection will help your team feel secure when doing their jobs and decrease the spread of disease.

Expand Safe Services for Customers

It may sound counterintuitive, but one of the best ways to secure your employees' health is to protect the health of your customers. If you have fewer people entering your store, that's fewer people that your staff comes in contact with each day. This, in turn, decreases the likelihood that someone with a disease will enter your store and infect others.

Set up safe services for your customers like online ordering and curbside pickup. Though your staff must hand these bagged items to customers in their vehicles, they don’t have to interact face-to-face, which is the crucial change. For those consumers who want to shop in-store, try implementing traffic flow signs and self-checkout lanes that minimize staff-customer interactions. You can have a staff member disinfect each of these kiosks after use, but the generally diminished contact will improve health regulations.

Improve Employee Compensation

Your employees work hard, and they deserve adequate compensation. But many employers fail to note the connection between compensation and employee health. Any manager who says they want to promote staff health must make the proper changes. If your employees cannot afford to take a day off due to health, you may not be compensating them well enough. The last thing you want is a sick employee to come to work and infect others. Consider paying your people more, if possible.

If you want to take a different approach, you can dedicate money from your employee's paycheck for healthcare. Research and offer health insurance to your staff so they can take advantage of benefits. This way, they have a financial safety net if they must go to the doctor or stay home for a day or two. These benefits will also incentivize staff to work hard because they feel valued and protected.

Involve Your Staff

Any new initiative should involve the beneficiaries' help, so include your staff in the planning and implementation of your health procedures. Provide ample opportunity for honest feedback with things like suggestion boxes and training with Q&A sessions. If you don't already have an open-door policy, you should start one and encourage lower-level employees to communicate with supervisors and management directly. These channels of communication are critical for a successful organization. When people feel heard and understood, they will trust your decision-making and new programs.

Personal Health Practices

Health and safety extend beyond protection from infectious diseases. A healthy team member must also be healthy at home in how they care for their wellbeing. Your workplace should promote personal health practices such as healthy eating, physical exercise, and quality rest. Though you cannot enforce these standards, it never hurts to encourage people to care for the bodies. You can post simple signage inspiring a healthy lifestyle and motivational quotes from people.

As a grocery store, you have a unique opportunity to equip your staff to make healthy food choices. You can offer discounts to staff purchasing goods from your store. You could even consider heavily discounting healthy or organic items, so your team has the means to eat healthy at home.

Utilize these ways grocery stores can ensure employee health and safety and make a difference in your shop. You value your people, and you want them to know it, so take the time to audit your safety protocols. With health at the forefront, you can make a real difference in your staff culture and encourage healthy practices.