Woolworths trials bodycams to curb employee assault

Following a spike in staff assaults, Australia’s largest supermarket chain is trialling body cameras to improve staff safety.

Woolworths Service Supervisor Jasmine Sakoua serves a customer at Rosehill, Sydney, while wearing a body camera. Picture: The Saturday Telegraph / Sam Ruttyn

Australians could soon find themselves recorded while shopping for essentials at the nation’s largest supermarket chain.

Following a spike in staff assaults, Woolworths is trialling a new police-like bodycam which will be turned on when managers believe a staff member is at risk.

The new recording devices, about the size of a cassette, sit on the chest of employees, hung by a lanyard around their neck.

Woolworths quietly rolled out the devices two weeks ago at supermarkets in Sydney’s Berala, Kempsey and Rosehill. The decsion arrived after Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association found 85 per cent of retail staff had been subject to verbal, physical or sexual abuse, The Saturday Telepraph reported.

Woolworths director of stores Rob Moffat said the company was trialling the cameras to help curb a growing surge of in-store assaults which doubled last year.

Sakoua’s bodycamera hangs by her name tag. Picture: The Saturday Telegraph / Sam Ruttyn

“We’re trialling team safety cameras in a small number of stores to see if they can help prevent assaults and abuse of our team members,” Mr Moffat told The Saturday Telegraph.

“Nobody deserves to be abused at work, so it’s important we look at new measures to help keep our team members safe.”

Mr Moffat said a similar system had proved widely effective in retails stores across the UK and the US.

SDA said they’d received a positive response from Woolworths staff after the first week of the trial.

“They said a couple of times someone appeared as though they would get abusive but their eyes went to the camera and then they stopped,” SDA said.

SDA said surveys of retail, warehouse and fast-food industries found at least a quarter of employees had been physically or verbally abused and between 12 and 14 per cent were subject to physical violence and sexual abuse.