iStock.com/jetcityimage
December 26, 2024
Walmart, TJX Giving Body Cameras to Store Personnel: For Safety, Loss Prevention, or Both?
Marking a shift in how retail operations are managed at brick-and-mortar stores, at least two major retailers — Walmart and TJX — are testing the waters by equipping certain staff members with body cameras.
Walmart’s Body Cam Test for Staff Hinges Around Safety
Starting as a pilot program in the Dallas area, Walmart is deploying Axon body cameras to certain front-line employees, per Fortune. The blue-and-yellow brand was tight-lipped about the deployment, offering only brief remarks on the topic.
“While we don’t talk about the specifics of our security measures, we are always looking at new and innovative technology used across the retail industry,” a Walmart spokesperson told CNBC. “This is a pilot we are testing in one market, and we will evaluate the results before making any longer-term decisions.”
CNBC cited a person familiar with the new program as saying that Walmart’s primary concern is ensuring employee safety rather than loss prevention.
This sentiment was reinforced by findings put forth by the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) latest retail theft and violence report. Data from that survey found that 91% of retailers polled said shoplifters were significantly more aggressive and violent than they were in 2019.
More recently, between 2022 and 2023 alone, retailers surveyed reported a 42% uptick in shoplifting incidents that involved threats or acts of violence and a 39% hike in incidents involving the threat, display, or use of a weapon.
TJX Deploys Body Cams to Loss Prevention Associates
Earlier this year, TJX — the parent company responsible for the T.J. Maxx, Marshall’s, and HomeGoods brands — began equipping its loss prevention associates with body cameras. On a May 2024 call with analysts, TJX CFO John Joseph Klinger indicated that the move had been successful in trimming back shrink and had also proven to deescalate certain situations that could have proven dangerous otherwise.
“One of the things that we’ve added — we started to do last year, late towards the year, wear body cameras on our [loss prevention] associates,” said Klinger. “And when somebody comes in, it’s sort of — it’s almost like a deescalation where people are less likely to do something when they’re being videotaped. So we definitely feel that that’s playing a role also.”
Store Associates Are Not Law Enforcement Officers
As Danny Karon, consumer attorney at Karon LLC, told Fortune, it’s important to remember that retail employees are not police officers — not regarding training, job description, or legal authority.
“Though some people would blame store employees for insufficiently intervening in acts of in-store violence, store employees are not police officers,” Karon said.
“It’s not their job to put out fires; it’s their job to sell merchandise. Anyone who blames store employees for customer violence and, accordingly, discourages the use of body cameras is looking at this problem all wrong,” he continued.
With organized retail theft becoming an increasingly pressing issue in the retail industry, equipping frontline staff with body cameras may be at least one piece of the puzzle in terms of solving — or at least somewhat mitigating — this troubling trend. Whether these pilot programs will spin off into broader adoption across the retail business remains to be seen, as do the potential unforeseen consequences of filming customer and staff interactions more generally.
Discussion Questions
Would a standard deployment of body cameras for all retail personnel actually work to deter violence against employees, as well as to reduce theft?
What are some of the unforeseen consequences of deploying body cameras to retail workers en masse?
Will body cameras become a standard part of retail employee kit in the years to come?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Kai Clarke
CEO, President- American Retail Consultants
Jamie Tenser
Retail Tech Marketing Strategist | B2B Expert Storytelling™ Guru | President, VSN Media LLC
Brad Halverson
Principal, Clearbrand CX
Recent Discussions
More Discussions
Would Recording In-Store Associates Help as a Training Tool?
Ethosphere is banking on AI-driven recordings of in-store associate practices as the next big thing in…Some Retailers Are Trimming Holiday Sales Discounts: Is This a Dangerous Play?
Some retailers are pulling back from deep discounts this holiday season. Is this a dangerous play?Has Kroger Discovered the Limits of Automated Warehouses?
Kroger is winding down its relationship with Ocado, citing cost overruns and a reorganization of its…
Because retail-criminals are not at all concerned about being caught, body cams on employees will not prevent theft at all. As soon as a mob-theft occurs, employees are told to just watch the people walk or run out of the building and not to intervene.
Due to defunding and disempowerment, police officers can do little even when they are right outside. A police officer who touches someone, or worse, pulls out a gun, will become a viral video, losing his or her job and reputation.
In terms of protecting employees, I don’t know how, since they all involve the same issues. Body cameras are useless until progressive leaders recognize the need for adequately staffed, empowered law enforcement.
Otherwise, body cams are almost useless.
We’re rather jumping the gun here (pun not intended but noted): before we deploy, let’s experiment. While criminals aren’t noted for being geniuses, there’s usually some thinkng involved (somewhat the inverse of commenting, where the majority of thoughtful comments are offset by the occasional ill-informed rant[s]): mis-estimation of risk, and (logically) a targeting of low-risk marks suggests there’s deterrent potential here; or even an occasional bit of useful evidence being produced. There may be little to gain, but there’s little to lose either, beyond the cost of the cameras…exactly the kind of expense large retailers can afford to undertake.
This is a solution looking for a problem. Stores already have many cameras, recording devices, and theft prevention measures in place. Adding a personal body camera seems to add to personal privacy issues, as well as violating many of our personal freedoms guaranteed to us as Americans. Who would feel comfortable going to the restroom with one of these on? Or just talking to a customer trying to answer their question? How would that customer feel asking someone a question who has one of these cameras on? Many states mandate a signed affidavit to record someone for any reason. How will this work? This is trouble waiting to happen.
This. To your point, it’s hard to see how this will work. Do front-line employees become loss prevention associates? I see lawsuits and privacy issues as well. And with social media, this could become a negative really quickly for retailers, especially those are wrongly accused. There has ot be a better option other than locking everything up.
Agreed. With security cameras in place, bodycams feel like overkill. The privacy concerns you raised are valid, and I can’t see many people feeling comfortable with them. The focus should be on preventing theft rather than policing.
Body cams for retail store employees is a creative and symbolic experiment, at least, but we know next to nothing about the unintended consequences. So let’s tread carefully here.
TJX’s assertion that body cams have contributed to de-escalation of certain incidents sounds promising.
Walmart tests just about everything, so I would not interpret its move as an endorsement so much as a fact-finding effort.
Some key questions remain to be answered:
Which employees should be equipped with body cams? If only uniformed loss-prevention associates, what does that imply about their roles and responsibilities? Not to mention their compensation?Will body cams actually de-escalate in-store confrontations consistently? Could their visible presence cause some incidents to become more dangerous?What message will body cams send to honest shoppers about their personal safety in your stores?Will body cams lead to more arrests? More convictions?How will privacy advocates respond in the event of an actual arrest supported by store body-cam evidence?Let’s consider this is a preliminary test, motivated by a degree of despair and frustration over systematic store theft. As a control group, compare outcomes versus stores with fixed stationary security cameras.
Security cameras around the building or store have not thwarted shoplifters. So, will having body cameras on employees help? While the findings seem positive, we won’t see much of a drop in shrink until the store is willing to prosecute the shoplifters. That said, body cams could thwart abuse toward employees. Everyone (including employees) will know they are being watched.
Keeping employees safe should be a priority at retail, end of story. But the solution is body cams all around? Store employees required to wear these may come to feel if these are actually less of a practical theft/safety deterrent and introduce more questions if its intrusion into their working habits, in recording conversations with others, or even deter honest customers from approaching them. Then there are all kinds of policy and procedural issues which employees will need training for. This sounds like a new toy with more questions and risks than solutions.
Reducing theft depends on all parts of the system working. So it’s all well and good retailers gathering more evidence from body cameras, but if that evidence is not use to prosecute and punish by the justice system then it’s all for nothing. That said, if this even has a small impact on employee safety and morale then I am for it.
Amen – it’s great to collect data but the real question is “how do you plan to use that data?” Think of your in-store big box retailer experience: cameras in the parking lot, at the entrance, throughout the store, (now) on associates and then at the register. With each new introduction, has store theft and employee experience materially changed? Should we look at the broader camera presence as more a deterrent than an actual data source for revised store design principles and/or product placement? At some point, retailers will need to think bigger with what data is collected and how it is used.