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COVID-19 Retail Reopening Induction Guide & Templates: Australia

In the process of stopping the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, it's critical that all Australian retail businesses comply with their obligations from Health authorities to enforce the proper hygiene practices and ensure physical distancing is maintained in their workplace. All businesses need to have a functioning COVID-19 safety plan before they reopen and stay up to date on the advice from Health authorities as the situation is constantly changing.

Retail businesses resuming to normal activities need to have a resumption plan to restore their business operations and to also sustain the continuity of their business. Many Australian retailers are reopening their businesses gradually when Health and Government authorities have directed so under strict customer limits, hygiene practices, and social distancing inside their stores.

The major retail industry associations in Australia; the NRA (National Retail Association), (ARA (Australian Retailers Association), SCCA (Shopping Centre Council of Australia), and PGA (Pharmacy Guild of Australia) have jointly coordinated and developed a retail recovery protocol for COVID-19. It has been designed to assure retail employees and customers that retail businesses will still sustain strict public health standards and what those protocols should be.

Here are some of the actions that the protocol highlights to be taken into consideration by all the retailers who are getting back to their normal business activities and we've digitised some of these areas to further help retail businesses in managing these areas. With a COVID retail induction, retail businesses can ensure that all staff are fully aware of their obligations and procedures under the protocol.

Retail Induction: COVID-19 Protocols

With a retail COVID-19 induction, you can induct all retail workers on all important protocols as well as any other worker such as a contractor or volunteer. The induction can ensure all staff are aware of and ensure:

- Limiting the number of customers coming into the stores including the customers and the staff as per the guidelines
- Ensuring social distancing in the stores is observed with the procedures to follow when things aren't being done right by customers. Limiting public gatherings as per the government policies; for instance, the 1.5m rule should be properly adhered to.
- Guidelines around how to ensure customers are encouraged to use cashless methods of payments to reduce personal contact
- Promote thorough handwashing with soap and water among all staff and contractors and how often this should happen.
- Guidelines around shopping hours for the customers who may need special help such as the elderly or who are at higher risk of severe illness.
- How to monitor and ensure that building entrances, eating locations, customer service desks and other customer contact points have hand sanitizers in place and how staff can promote, monitor and encourage frequent hand washing by everyone.
- Making sure that all staff and contractors always cover sneezes and coughs and practicing hygiene constantly in the workplace with guidance on what to do when someone doesn't
- Instructions around frequent disinfection and cleaning of surfaces and high contact items such as registers, trolleys, counters, and shopping baskets in a retail store
- Prescreening all staff and contractors every day to ensure they are all healthy and have no contact history or illness or flu symptoms
- Guidance around positioning of products inside the store to prevent crowding
- Inducting across all other relevant risks and hazards specific to the retail store and its unique workplace in line with the health advice

Engaging Staff During COVID-19

In our most recent survey of workplaces, over 80% of organisations have already implemented new onboarding and induction processes around how new staff are engaged. This ranges from the implementation of hand and hygiene inductions, infection control training, COVID-19 protocols and reporting onboarding and how to keep up to date with information from local authorities as it constantly changes.

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Why do a Retail Induction on COVID-19 Risks?

It helps ensure that staff and workers are updated with consistent and accurate information on how to tackle their tasks safely, we have created inductions on these areas. These inductions are specifically designed for all the staff, contractors, and any other worker on each of the established protocols. The workers need to go through the induction processes before or immediately after embarking on their tasks on the workplace and be taken through all the changes that have been made to the business.

Induction training helps ensure all the necessary information and practical guidance for workers is understood and acknowledged in order to undertake their job tasks safely ensuring the minimization of all the hazards posed by COVID-19 to acceptable levels. They make all the staff have a better understanding of coronavirus, its signs and symptoms, how the virus is spread and the various preventive measures to be observed in the business.