Woolworths Group’s Post

The safety of our team and customers is a priority for us and that's why we've been calling for more protections to help keep our team safe at work. Unfortunately, we have seen a significant rise in violent and aggressive behaviour in our stores directed towards our team - which is completely unacceptable. Our team members are mothers, fathers, sons and daughters - many of them young people in their first job - and all come to work to help customers. Violence and aggression is rising across the country, but Victoria accounts for more than 40% of all our reported cases - we need this to change. We have invested in increased security measures for our team, such as body worn cameras, personal safety alarms, upgrading CCTV and even use VR modules to train our team to deal with violent incidents in store. But we can't do this alone. That is why we have been advocating to governments across the country to pass laws which protect our team from this kind of abuse. These laws include Workplace Protection Orders, which enable employers to apply to ban repeat offenders from returning to our stores. Recently, our Victorian State Director of Operations, Sarah Gooding as well as two store managers, Madi and Jag joined the ARA and other retailers at the steps of the Victorian Parliament calling for these laws to be introduced by the Government. We’ve seen great steps taken by the ACT and SA with these laws, and we strongly encourage Workplace Protection Orders to be implemented in all other states and territories as soon as possible.