Episode 134 - Black Friday

This week we talk about Black Friday and the process of hazard prediction and prevention.

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Welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr. Mark French marks passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing up the best in leadership through creating strong values, learning opportunities, teamwork, and safety. Nothing is more important than protecting your people. Safety creates an environment for empathy, innovation, and empowerment. Together, we'll discover meaning and purpose through shaping our safety culture. Thanks for joining us this episode. And now, here is Dr. Mark French. And welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. I am your host, Dr. Mark French. And I am always happy and overjoyed and thankful that you have joined us during this time, I really appreciate it. So happy to have you. You know, this is kind of the Thanksgiving episode it's going to release I'm actually going to try to release it early. That way it's out there. But coming up is one of my the love hate relationship that I have with Black Friday. And I want to talk about that this week on the podcast. So I'm really looking forward to being able to chat through that and kind of go through what's about to happen, and how it's changed. And how I think it's going to continue to evolve from a leadership and safety standpoint. So I am not a Black Friday shopper, I was your typical Cyber Monday person. But now with things are going it's always some kind of sale online. So you don't have to worry about that. But I did it one time, years and years ago, I stood in line waited outside, heard all the speculation of how much they were going to have the one item I wanted. And it was freezing cold standing out there super early. everybody rushes through the door, kind of at a light jog trying to get to what you want first. And you get just wrapped up in the hype of it. And I never did it again. Because one that's too Piepoli for me, too, too much strain and stress there for me also, I'm not not good in those situations. But I know people love it. There's so many people who find it as a family event. They I mean, great. I think that's fantastic. It's that's why it's out there is people love that thrill of it and the fun and getting up early and doing your Christmas shopping and getting things done. And for me, I'm like who let it be delivered. But I want to talk a little bit about the history of this event, especially pre COVID. And I would laugh at jokingly in a very sarcastic way as my humor tends to be that you know, getting a dirt cheap TV is worth me trampling a man to death. It's that time of year let's trample someone to death for cheap electronics, and a Christmas gift for someone peace on earth and goodwill towards all men. Only so many people had to be killed during the process or so many fights broke out. It's unbelievable. When you see those things on television, you read about it. And it's it's real. We don't think it's because it maybe never happened to us. We feel that it may not be as real as people say, but it is very, very real. When this happens, then it's changed. So upfront kind of pre COVID. Some stores started doing 24 hour operations where they would have things covered up there'd be a guy who would do the big unveiling at whatever time 6am 5am And people would grab the first things people have to get out of the way. Now years before that when stores were closing. There were people who would have to open the doors for these crowds. And that's where it's been quite some time ago, but a worker had opened the doors they busted the doors knocked him to the ground, and the person was truly trampled to death. And when OSHA investigated it was a general duty citation when that happened, because there's really not there was definitely the lack of protection. But there was no exact law saying what is is the protection and that covers a lot of retail, that there are some dangers, they are workplace violence, dealing with the things that can happen in out there in the retail world. And you have to think about that handling of money, things that are happening, people are there, people can be unpredictable, especially people who haven't been trained like that you lose control of who comes in to that public location, unlike another style of workplace. And so you need to be ready and prepared in some precautions to it. And you kind of get a feel out what the crowd is doing. Now that has completely shifted to where now there's more time and operation in there. A lot more deals are going online, because stores are not wanting to employ people live. So you kind of have the choice of the self checkout, or you can just buy it and have it shipped to you. To me, that's easier. I, the whole thing about going to the store was always the personal touch and asking questions. And being a part of like a community of people who knew what you were doing or convenience of letting someone else take care of some of that work for you. That's kind of gone. And a whole separate line that has nothing to do with to me that has to do with a little bit more about leadership. And that cost of customer service versus the cost of doing business and how it's evolved. Now during COVID, shopping online became the norm. And that has continued into this year. So I was listening to a podcast I'm going to wonderful, wonderful podcast. And I will post a link to the podcast. Hopefully you can subscribe just another fantastic win. If you love safety. If you've love loss prevention, if you love just learning about different industries. The alert media's employee safety podcast is phenomenal. I was a guest on there. It's been a little while ago. I loved it, love the podcast, love the guests, they have such a dynamic and very great mix of knowledge and can't recommend enough but coming up on there will be one about what they're now calling blue Friday in the loss prevention world because there's so much crime going on in the retail space. And a quick statistic in 2022. They claim there was 694 fatalities, with over $112 billion in losses. Now the fatalities aren't just workers, it could be law enforcement and security. It can be the general public of things that are happening in the store. And it's also employees of the store for different reasons. Whether it be violence could be a great deal that someone needed and trampled over someone. Those things are what related to this, and they expect it to get higher, that retail crime is at the highest it's ever been. And as they're preparing for all this holiday shopping season, beginning with Black Friday, how do we control it? How do we create policies, procedures, plans? I think the biggest part is how do we create a plan to be ready for that. And we're kind of done with those long lines of waiting, it's kind of like you show up, you get in you find your location, you wait for the right time. There's also a lot more shifting away from the in store. And yet the violence and crime has continued to increase. Very interesting dynamic of what we're seeing change and continue to evolve, kind of in a post COVID There was an evolution up to COVID in the post COVID leadership part of coming into Black Friday and how we enter our holiday shopping season. And again, we're unsure of the numbers this year of like what is going to bring people to the store with some inflation going on with with other items within whatever economy. nonpolitical speaking, but there are things happening that may result in less spending this year unknown. But what that leads to is people showing up at the store, the more people you have the higher likelihood statistically that something may happen. And how are we preparing for it? How are we ready? How are we as a public going in there? But then also how are organizations protecting their people? So it's a very interesting dynamic when we think about protecting people, the public and protecting people, our employees, and then also protecting people like our partners in law enforcement, our partners and security Our partners that help keep all of that safe. How do we manage all of that, in this new world that we're unsure of where people are going to shop? What are their shopping patterns, how it's going to occur? Let's jump in a little bit more about that. In the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast, you are listening to the leading learning through safety podcast, with Dr. Mark French, D is da consulting, learn you lead others, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator is an amazing tool. The problem is that it can be easily misinterpreted. Dr. Mark French is MBTI certified and ready to help you discover your inner strengths. The MBTI assessment can help with team building stress management, communication, conflict management, and so much more. Individual and group sessions are available to help you discover what makes you great. For more information, visit us on the web at T SDA consulting.com. So the whole theme of where I'm going with the the Black Friday ideas is the act of planning. And this is I've kind of had this theme earlier, but I want to continue with it. And it's the idea that yes, there may not be an OSHA law that talks about Black Friday, and how to protect retail workers how to protect the public. But what OSHA does require is a workplace say of safe of known hazards. We know this is a known hazard, we know what may be coming, we have to prepare for it. We have to think through the scenarios we have to give our due diligence, we have to think about ways that we protect and that's what earlier on we knew the dangers. So years ago when some of these that trampling fatality in particular happened, there was already a known quantity that Black Friday can get a bit rowdy, there are already news stories about fights breaking out for certain items, things like that, that were happening. We knew there was a danger. And what the citation kind of led into was that it had been escalating year over year, a little bit more rowdy a little bit more exciting, a little bit more deals. And yet the protections never changed the procedure and the policy never evolved along with it. And that is one of the key components of a safety program. That is, I think advanced more than well, let's just follow the law. Now. Again, I'm going to go back and say this again, I would hesitate to think that if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably not one that's running around negligently going off, whatever, OSHA will never catch me. So thank you for that. First of all. Secondly, you're probably wanting to follow the law. Is the law, easy to think no. Talked about that kind of last week, about once we let lawmakers get involved, we put common sense out of the way and we put the lawyers in control. So yeah, we may be doing some really great things. And that's where we also need that advice of a safety professional, that lets us know that well, you know, you're doing a great job. We need to refine it a little bit to really meet what the law says to meet what the law is telling us to do. There's a little bit of refinement there, we got it. We got to jog some things around. And then there's that next level of advancement, how do we get ahead of it? How do we look at the hazards that are already in place? The ones we know about the ones we've seen, the ones that we have bumped into or near miss reporting is telling us about systemically? And how do we fix it. And I think that's one of my biggest we'll call it a gripe of concern about stores on Black Friday is they have known about the hazard. And every year I look in the news to see like what kind of things have happened on Black Friday. Now, past few years has been a little bit more tame, just because of the nature of where we have been in a COVID and post COVID. World. I still look to see what has happened. What kind of arguments fights breakouts. Because those are known quantities. We don't know where we don't know when we don't know. Like exactly when I say where and when I mean like exactly the time or exactly the location. But we know that excitement is high tensions are building people have gotten hyped up and excited, which is great for finding something that a loved one may really cherish and care for. Maybe it's a family event where you get together your family going out and do this together. It's a lot of fun, you enjoy it. But then there are people who just get wrapped up a little bit too much in it and get violent. We know that can happen. We know there's a potential for it, we know it will happen somewhere in what you hope that doesn't happen to your store to your location to your people. You have to think through the process, what will we do to help prevent it? What will we do? If it does happen? How will we respond quickly and effectively? For it? Most OSHA laws, if some of the more severe ones are written that way, they're written all the way up through prevention, prevent, prevent, prevent, but then they don't forget to think about emergency response. If it does happen, what will you do? Like the prevention of fire policy, it talks about emergency management, it talks about prevention, because you should have that full gamut. We don't want the worst to happen. No safety person out there, because man, I hope we get to enact our emergency response program today. No, we hope that we will drill our emergency response today. But we definitely don't want to actually enact it. But it can happen, especially with people because it may not even be a internal, it can be a medical emergency, you still want to be prepared for how you respond effectively fast. You want to get the praise for having a good system running, along with prevention. And that is what we have to think of. And this is any, this leads into a bigger scope of leadership and safety. When we think about leadership, our leaders we think about how we don't lose profit, we think about how we don't lose quality, we think about how we keep our customers and gain more customers. Are we thinking that proactively and safety? Are we putting that much thought in Hey, don't have that last time? Or are we thinking about how do we don't even let that first injury happened? And how do we respond after it happens? Are we ready for those scenarios? That's what I really want to bring forward. Is that understanding that we as leaders, we as influencers, use that tool of predictive for a lot of things. Let's also use it for safety. Let's not just react and let something happen to us. Let's jump in. Let's get it ready. Let's be there, be ahead and do our best to prevent it. thinking ahead about what hazards mean, this doesn't even mean Black Friday for retail. This means for your workplace, there are probably hazards that you could search the regulations for and maybe not find the answer you're looking for. You may not find your exact circumstance in there. What do you do, you do your very, very best to get good thinkers together to talk about how we prevent bad outcomes. That's I know that sounds so simple when I say it, and I've said it a lot. And I've had exceptional, difficult implementing it. Because it takes time it takes efforts. It takes a lot of people and energy to work through those hazard reports. But once you've done one, and you have it out there, oh, it's such a beautiful thing. Because everybody takes that ownership in it, because everybody helped. And then you build on that momentum. You keep going, you keep creating. That's the exciting part and the fun part about being part of the safety and leadership world. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. Really happy to have you part of it. I hope you have a fantastic holiday weekend in a very, very safe Black Friday. Until next time we chat stay safe. Thank you for listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast. More content is available online@www.ts da consulting.com. All the opinions expressed on the podcast are solely attributed to the individual and not affiliated with any business entity. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes. It is not a substitute for proper policy, appropriate training or legal advice. This has been the leading and learning through his Safety podcast