Vitag’s Pre-Christmas Retail Security Checklist
Don’t let the Christmas rush catch you off guard! With the festive season approaching at lightning speed, it’s crucial to prepare your store for increased foot traffic and potential security risks. Our comprehensive checklist outlines the essential steps to safeguard your business, protect your team, and ensure a smooth holiday shopping experience for your customers.
Staff and Training
Staffing levels: Ensure you have adequate staff for peak periods. Review permanent and casual staff availability for the Christmas peak at least 3 months prior. Make sure each store has enough staff to cover all the key zones within the store during the peak shopping weeks.
Staff training: Schedule in time with store teams to refresh their loss prevention training. Include topics such as common theft methods, proactive customer service, handling difficult situations and incident management. Check out our handy guide here.
Visual merchandising: Ensure stores have clear sightlines for floor staff, and “zones” for each team member to operate in.
Security Systems
EAS systems: Test your EAS unit and if you spot a fault, book a service or a remote service check with Vitag. If it’s time for an upgrade, you’ll find more information on shopfront security here.
EAS tags and labels: Check you have sufficient stocks of EAS tags and labels. To place a top-up order, contact our team here.
Check Your Locks: Ensure locks are working and no keys are missing for storerooms and cabinets. If your team are carrying a bunch of keys and finding the right one is slowing them down, talk to us about OneKEY and smart locks.
CCTV review: Check camera coverage and that all cameras are working.
Alarm systems: Test your alarm systems and check that notification lists are up to date with your security company in case an alarm is triggered.
Point of sale systems: Ensure POS systems are updated and secure. Consider a more secure cashless mobile POS system if you are still using a cash register.
Stock Security & Management
High-value items: Review your visual merchandising and make a plan to display high-value items securely. Merchandise security tools like Zips, cable locks, safers and package wraps are the ideal deterrent for would-be thieves.
Stocktaking: Don’t be caught short on key items in peak season. Many businesses we work with under our RFID Inventory Control program are shocked to find that their stock file accuracy can be as low as 70% which can result in missed sales, particularly for e-commerce. Schedule in a pre-Christmas stocktake to ensure your stock files are up to date and replenish missing items. To make stocktaking a quick and simple daily exercise for your team, talk to us about stocktaking with RFID.
Inventory management: Implement effective inventory control measures to ensure stock levels stay accurate, especially for e-commerce orders. RFID can help you here too.
Delivery management: Unpacking new deliveries on the shop-floor during peak periods isn’t practical or secure. If this is something your store team typically does, work with them to develop a system for processing new deliveries away from customers.
Store Environment
Lighting: Ensure you have adequate lighting both inside and outside the store. If a store has dark areas, book in an electrician now to install some extra lighting.
Store layout: Review store layout for potential security risks and blind spots. To book a store security review with our team, drop us a line here.
Access control: Review and reinforce access control points with the store team.
Emergency procedures: Update emergency plans and conduct drills with your team to ensure everyone knows how to manage themselves and protect customers if an incident were to occur. Ensure that managers are refreshing this information in their daily briefing meetings, so that casual staff aren’t missed.
Customer Experience
Queue management: If you’re expecting high volumes of customers in peak times, plan for efficient queue management with your team. Invest in a couple of stanchions to keep out the back in case they need to redirect queues.
Customer service: Emphasize excellent customer service to build trust and deter shoplifters. Opportunistic thieves are significantly less likely to go through with their plans if they are warmly greeted when they enter a store and know they’re being observed.
Make your Christmas trade a roaring success and a pleasure for customers and staff alike.
With a security plan in place and checks done early, you’ll be able to enjoy Christmas dinner without shrinkage and security risks weighing on your mind.
For support and advice, our Vitag team are here to help