Customer personal injury claims can be costly and very damaging to a retail establishment’s reputation. They can be much more frequent than employee claims in some types of stores, especially warehouses that allow customer access. Employee safety programs are not sufficient to protect customers, who are at risk for many more accidents than employees
Below is an overview of these retail industry risks to help you identify potential blind spots in your risk management and how to mitigate them:
Your Liability:
You are required to maintain safe premises for your customers: in legal terms, you have a high duty of care. This includes the duty to warn customers of non-obvious, dangerous conditions that you know about, to use ordinary care in active operations in the business and to make reasonable inspections to discover dangerous conditions and make them safe.
Most customer accidents are preventable, so it is important to take steps to make your establishment safer and less exposed to the risk of customer injury and litigation.
Common Injuries:
Common injuries that could become your liability include:
Steps you can take to minimize the risk of a customer claim include the following:
Find Out More:
This list is not exhaustive, and assessing your company's exposures and taking the appropriate precautions can go a long way toward protecting your retail industry business.
Download our “Risk Insights - Minimizing Customer Injury Risk” guide for an in-depth list of more ways to minimize gaps in your risk management: