Working in retail stores like Walmart can be demanding. Employees have to stay on their feet for hours, assist customers, operate machinery, and more. And with so much activity happening across wide sales floors and stock rooms, injury risks are high.
Thankfully, advances in technology are making retail jobs safer.
Using Advanced Analytics Software to Continuously Identify Emerging Risks
Retail stores generate massive volumes of data daily through point-of-sale systems, workforce management platforms, foot traffic counters, weather integrations, and more. By collecting and analyzing this constant information flow with enterprise-level analytics software, they can do more than simply improve productivity thanks to technology. They can also be able to consistently identify emerging workplace hazards.
For example, by mixing sales metrics, schedules, and customer counts, algorithms can pinpoint understaffing issues that may be forcing employees to cut safety corners to meet demands. Data shows most employee sprains happen on Sundays in one region, indicating inadequate staffing to handle heightened weekend volumes. Scheduling changes are made to prevent safety incidents going forward.
Additionally, by implementing sensors on flooring, companies can be notified when slippery conditions arise in certain areas based on humidity or leaking refrigerators. Proactive warnings enable quick closure and remediation before falls occur. This “risk intelligence” allows organizations to get ahead of hazards before they cause harm.
Automating High-Risk and Repetitive Motion Tasks
Retail employees often have to engage in repetitive motion patterns like extensive walking, bending, lifting merchandise, climbing ladders, and scanning items. Performing these ergonomic strains continuously over months and years puts undue stress on muscles, tendons, and the skeletal system, often causing career-ending injuries for workers.
With automated solutions, workers avoid these risks altogether while jobs get done better. For instance, some Walmart locations use robotic floor scrubbers that self-navigate aisles using lidar, quietly avoiding obstacles and pedestrians while constantly optimizing cleaning routes for efficiency. Not only does this eliminate safety issues of maneuvering loud, unwieldy equipment, but floors get cleaned more frequently and consistently without wearying staff.
Other innovations like self-driving inventory audit robots relieve employees from perilously riding ladders daily to scan items, avoiding long-term ladder-fall risks. Exoskeleton vests make lifting and transporting merchandise less taxing on back muscles, reducing strains. And mobile scan-and-go workstations integrate scales to enforce ergonomic load limits for safe lifting. Investing in these sorts of assistive and automated technologies has profound positive impacts on workplace well-being over the long run.
Monitoring Environments and Employees with Sensors and Wearables
Modern internet-connected wearable gadgets and integrated environmental sensors have exciting implications for retail safety as they feed key data to analytic systems. Smartwatches can continuously monitor heart rate and blood pressure for early signs of distress or developing health conditions, notifying supervisors in real time if vitals seem abnormal. This allows prompt intervention with at-risk workers.
Thin sensor-laden work shoes can map posture and subtle motion patterns to watch for unsafe behaviors like skipping safety steps or improper lifting techniques that raise injury odds. Safety directors get dashboard updates allowing timely training refreshers. Other sensors tracking skin temperature and sweat levels also reveal early symptoms of heat stress or exhaustion so workers can take timely breaks.
Some distribution centers also use wearable cameras with object recognition allowing remote managers to view work in real-time and provide instant feedback on imminent unsafe behaviors like improper heavy load manipulation before sprains and falls happen. Over time, data and video from wearables may also reveal programmatic training gaps to target and improve.
Leveraging AI and Advanced Algorithms
Artificial intelligence and complex algorithms running on massive data from sensors and workflows are making risk detection and intervention easier and more accurate. This is because machine learning vision programs can continuously analyze images and video from security feeds to identify emerging trip dangers, smoke-indicating fires, suspicious lingering preventing theft, overcrowded areas raising safety issues, and more.
More advanced AI systems can even interpret natural language tones and emotional cues in speeches to determine if a customer interaction becomes inappropriately hostile or aggressive and notify authorities immediately. This enables rapid response to diffuse simmering situations before violence erupts.
Furthermore, algorithms crunching biometric data can even detect emerging illnesses or compounding emotional stress loads that may indicate an employee poses an imminent safety risk to themselves or others. This prompts supportive interventions like health assistance or job function changes to avoid tragic incidents.
Utilizing Digital Tools to Standardize and Optimize Safety Education
Technology is also helping provide more consistent, optimized safety education for retail personnel. Digital training platforms allow reliable nationwide delivery of vital safety information to all locations in engaging formats with embedded comprehension checks.
For hazardous equipment certifications, simulations recreate high-risk scenarios like safely handing propane tanks or changing compactor drums so personnel can practice safely. VR further enables realistic risky practices like rapidly mobilizing pallets across the stockroom without real danger. This VR training reduces safety incidents later by building competency.
Gamified safety drills on mobile devices with competitive leaderboards pit different stores against each other to motivate engagement with indispensable safety protocols. Refreshers and policy updates ensure standards never lapse. Print-on-demand codebooks also eliminate excuses for forgotten protocols.
Easy-to-configure digital signage provides affordable access to programmable safety messaging displays across any facility to reinforce good habits. Quick response codes near equipment link to usage guidelines and manufacturers’ specifications for conveniently accessible refreshers.
For transparency and continuous improvement, electronic safety audits and centralized injury reporting tools facilitate detailed injury reporting and tracking so that corporate can monitor issues in real time across all locations. Daily safety reports keep local managers vigilant of emerging risks while long-term trend data informs tactical corporate decisions to align safety programs with strategy. It also reduces legal exposure risks – for example, an employee at Walmart is less likely to reach out to a Walmart workers injury lawyer, alleging negligence, when the evidence shows the company going the extra mile to reduce injury risks.
Enabling Rapid Emergency Response Through Connected Devices
The rapid growth of connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices allows countless sensors, workstations, and environmental controls to link up and communicate important contextual data to each other continuously. This technology integration dramatically enhances safety coordination, awareness and emergency response.
For example, proximity sensors in store rooms can signal motorized carts to slow down when congestion is high at the warehouse entrance. Path routing data can also provide carts with directions to avoid blind corners. And video cameras spot spills moments after occurrences so handlers avoid harm.
Location beacons also enable rapid coordination of emergency responders when seconds count. If an employee badge triggers a health alarm, responders rush precisely to the right spot without losing precious time hunting in a vast store. In serious accidents, backup medical help can also be proactively dispatched based on live updates.
Exciting Frontiers in AI and Predictive Analytics
Although current safety tech in use brings tremendous protections for personnel now, emerging solutions on the horizon promise to expand capabilities even more in the coming years. Continued AI breakthroughs around visual comprehension and risk forecasting may soon minimize a number of injury vectors.
For example, we are nearing algorithms accurate enough to predict environmental risk factors or safety procedure lapses days in advance so companies can avoid dangers altogether instead of merely responding once harm occurs. This revolutionary shift to ultra-reliability could save countless broken bones and lives.
Augmented reality glasses may also gain computer vision, able to monitor workers’ vision field, alerting them to peripheral threats literally outside their sight like approaching shoppers or distracted drivers in parking lots before grave accidents happen. In short, the applications are endless as software and hardware continue rapidly advancing.
With so many retail safety innovations yet to materialize in labs around the world, the future continues looking brighter in eliminating preventable harm for employees.