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OSHA continues focus on small-footprint retail as easy targets for higher penalties with its most recent visit to Forever 21 at Westfarms Mall in Farmington, Connecticut, which resulted in penalties of $165,000 on the retailer for violations found at that single location.
During the November 2014 inspection, boxes were stored in the hallway leading from the retail space to an emergency exit, haphazardly stacked as high as 10 feet in some areas, not only blocking the exit needed for emergency use, but also creating a hazard where merchandise could fall and injure employees according to Warren Simpson, Occupational Safety and Health Administration area director in the Hartford Area Office. “Four stockroom employees were assigned to work in these conditions. At the time of the inspection, they were working around-the-clock before Black Friday, when inventory levels were higher.”
Small-footprint retailers such as mall boutiques, gasoline convenience stores, dollar retailers, drug stores and the like, are challenged with small-area retail spaces, and even smaller stockroom areas. When a routine weekly delivery arrives, it can usually create space-related hazards that can result in injuries and OSHA penalties. Common violations include blocked emergency exits, blocked electrical panels, and improperly stacked boxes and merchandise.
OSHA is aware of the space-related safety challenges of small-footprint retailers, particularly at busy times, which is why OSHA visited Forever 21 at the height of Black Friday preparations. Because repeat violations within 5 years at any location of a business can be penalized at a much higher level, targeting small footprint retail chains is an easy way for OSHA to keep pace with the agency’s aggressive citation and penalty quotas with very little effort.
Safety First Consulting wrote about OSHA’s small-footprint retail focus in a recent article called, “OSHA Targets Small-Sized Retail & Convenience Stores.”
Solutions for small-footprint retailers are possible, but they can also be challenging and costly. For small-footprint retailers, solving the hazards associated with a small storage room include:
- Schedule smaller and more frequent deliveries to the stores and immediately stock the retail floor upon delivery;
- Create auxiliary storage areas outside the retail space; and/or
- Increase the size of the stockroom area (by reducing the size of the retail area or expanding the existing space).
None of these solutions examples are cheap, but they may be effective in alleviating the potential losses to injuries and OSHA penalties. Less costly measures may arguably be more effective:
Marking areas on the floor where stock, empty boxes and carts/dollies may be placed;
- Training store employees about safe use of stockroom areas;
- Conducting frequent and documented inspections;
- Documenting corrective actions including employee disciplinary actions for unsafe behaviors.
Another effective practice for small-footprint chains is a scorecard inspection of each store to establish safety performances of each store and each operational area. When store managers and Area Directors are held accountable for safety performance, and measured against other stores and areas, safety performance tends to improve because no store manager or Area Director wants to be saddled with the worst safety performance of the company.
With continued inspections, grading and holding people responsible for their actions, the organization should see an ever-increasing attention to safety improvement and improved safety performance.
Safety First Consulting helps businesses identify OSHA compliance deficiencies in their workplaces for less than the cost of one OSHA penalty, and can manage safety programs for businesses for less than half the cost of hiring a full time Safety Manager. In addition to offering custom written safety programs for companies, Safety First Consulting provides required safety training, industrial hygiene sampling, noise sampling, and workplace inspections.