Most people assume that workplace injuries occur in industrial environments.
However retail employees are as vulnerable as employees in higher-risk fields to being hurt at the workplace.
As a business owner, knowing the type of retail injuries your employees are exposed to is necessary to ensure your workers’ comp insurance is comprehensive enough to provide coverage for them. Here are such retail injuries.
1. Fractures and Bruises
These retail injuries often arise when an employee trips, slips, or falls on the floor. Employees are exposed to slips and fall when the floor is wet or slippery, or the aisles and parking lots are uneven. On the other hand, if passageways are cluttered with boxes, employees can easily get tripped by them.
In addition, moving or falling objects can strike employees, leading to fractures or broken bones. An employee can also fall from a scaffolding or ladder, causing broken bones and bruises. Therefore, business owners in the retail industry should ensure their workers’ comp insurance covers such injuries.
2. Musculoskeletal Injuries
Most retail environments don’t invest in the proper lifting equipment because of their limited spaces or tight budgets. This means employees are left to lift heavy or bulky items without the proper lifting equipment. In addition, they may need to push or pull heavy loads. As a result, they get exposed to musculoskeletal injuries. These injuries are most common in service stations and convenience stores. They affect an employee’s back, arms, shoulders, and hands and cause severe inflammation. Retail business owners need insurance coverage that can handle these injuries comprehensively.
3. Cuts and Scrapes
Retail employers get exposed to these injuries because they frequently use sharp cutting tools, like box cutters and knives, to open packaging and boxes. Although some are minor scrapes, there is a high probability of getting serious lacerations, especially when cutting tools are used incorrectly. These wounds may require urgent medical care. Besides providing protective gear, workers’ comp insurance can be useful in such cases.
4. Repetitive Strain Injuries
The nature of retail work is fast-paced and is accompanied by standing for long hours and performing repetitive tasks. Such repetitive tasks repeatedly affect the same body parts, causing repetitive strain injuries. For instance, keyboarding is a repetitive task affecting an employee’s same body parts. It can lead to inflammation and pain in the arms, hands, and wrists and lead to carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis.
5. Backaches and Leg Cramps
Cashiers and other employees whose work requires them to stand for long hours daily are exposed to significant and extended lower-body muscle stress and fatigue that causes severe backaches and leg cramps. Retail business owners need to ensure their workers’ comp insurance covers such injuries.
Conclusion
Retail injuries can be expensive to treat, depending on their severity. Business owners should strive to maintain a safe workplace by properly training their staff, enforcing safety standards, and supervising their employees. However, besides these safety measures, employers should invest in workers’ comp insurance to cover these common retail injuries.
