Body-worn Cameras - Protecting colleagues, not monitoring them

Body-worn cameras in retail have moved from a security add-on to a frontline safety device, and the question has shifted from whether they work to how to get colleagues to wear them. In this episode of Sell More Lose Less, Colin Peacock is joined by Professor Emmeline Taylor to unpack what a recent ECR call with around 40 retailers revealed about deploying cameras on the shop floor.

The evidence base is now strong. One major retailer, in its third iteration of cameras, reported a 30% reduction in violence and aggression when security officers wore them, rising to 40% once tens of thousands of frontline colleagues did. In post-deployment surveys, 38% of colleagues said the cameras improve their safety. Emmeline sets out the three things a camera does: it deters an incident before it happens, it has a “civilising effect” that de-escalates a confrontation, and it captures evidence when all else fails. But the harder problem is adoption. This is a hearts-and-minds job about protecting colleagues, not monitoring them, and it builds on ECR research into whether body-worn cameras work in retail and the wider story on video in retail.

Body-worn cameras in retail: the full conversation

Why retailers deploy body-worn cameras

COLIN:

Welcome to the Sell More, Lose Less podcast with ECR Retail Loss. Every episode I’m joined by an expert and academic in the field, and this week we’re joined by Professor Emmeline Taylor. Emmeline has been working with ECR for a while now, and we’ve covered many different subjects. Today we’re going to talk about body-worn cameras, sometimes called body-worn video. They go by lots of names. They started life in the mid-2010s. I think Asda or Sainsbury’s claim to be one of the first to deploy them in stores around the safety use case. A lot has happened since then.

I want to use this chance to catch up with you on how they’re being used, how they’re helping to protect workers and shoppers, and what the latest thinking is at retailers. Can you give us an overview of where we are? What’s the rationale, the use cases, the successes? What are some of the executional challenges? And if you were just starting out, what business case would you put forward, and where do you think we’re heading next? A lot to unpack, and we’ve only got about 10 or 15 minutes, so start now.

EMMELINE:

Hi, Colin. Body-worn cameras, or colleague safety cams, have different names in different businesses, and I think that in itself is quite interesting. They were introduced into retail after already having an established history in other sectors, particularly law enforcement, where they became normalised for police officers wearing them in their everyday roles. So there was a tried and tested mechanism that had been evaluated over several years before they came into retail. Even since then, fast forward maybe ten years, the devices have evolved significantly. They used to be relatively large, cumbersome and difficult to activate, without long memory or battery life. Now we’ve got much slicker devices. Many are branded, so they convey the whole brand of the retailer deploying them. And they’ve had some really big successes.

But let’s think about the evidence base. Why would you deploy them? The evidence suggests they can deter incidents from ever occurring. Somebody who walks into a store intending theft or aggression sees the camera and thinks, actually, I might go elsewhere. We also know they have what is described as a civilising effect. You’re trying to return an item, customer service says no, your receipt isn’t valid, and you start to get angry or aggressive. The colleague says, I’m going to activate the camera to get a good record of this, and suddenly the person calms down. They don’t want to be caught on camera being aggressive. So it has that de-escalation capacity. And then, thirdly, if deterrence fails and the civilising effect fails, we’ve got evidence. That’s where these cameras are really key as well. So let’s talk about the ECR call we had with multiple retailers on it. There were, what, forty?

COLIN:

Forty or so, yes. High interest, very high interest. I like the way you broke that down into those three benefit areas, and the behaviour changes that follow from them. Thank you for that.

EMMELINE:

And we’ll come back to those in terms of the business case. Do you deploy because you need better evidence, or because you want that de-escalation? We’re seeing huge rollouts now. One major retailer described being in their third iteration of body-worn cameras. Going back to early deployment in 2017, that was just for security officers initially, and that proof of concept had some really great success. They quoted a 30% reduction in violence and aggression when security officers wore them. That gave them the momentum to introduce them for colleagues. So then you have tens of thousands of devices used by frontline, public-facing colleagues, and that resulted in a 40% reduction in violence and aggression. They built that momentum over time.

Hearts and minds: getting colleagues to wear them

EMMELINE:

What was really key for their deployment was encouraging colleagues to see this as a tool for protecting them, not monitoring them. You need to win the hearts and minds of your staff. Many staff say, I’m not going to wear it, or I’m not going to charge it, because they feel concerned about the device and sceptical about how it’s going to be used. This is well versed in the research with police. To begin with, many colleagues would say, what if I need to use the bathroom, or is this being used for my performance? Being able to reassure staff around surveillance creep, or function creep as it’s often called, that we’re never going to use it in that way, is really key. Is that something you were picking up on, Colin?

COLIN:

Yes, definitely. The broader point about culture is that you need to change the culture and make people feel comfortable wanting to wear it. One retailer shared how they’d introduced a monitoring system to know how many cameras were in use at any one time, whether they were working and whether they were on charge. So I do sense that getting colleagues to wear them has been a challenge, for the reasons you’ve talked about. Changing the culture so people feel it’s helping them is really important, and setting the rules and boundaries is important too.

EMMELINE:

Definitely. It’s about moving away from this being perceived as mandatory, an imposition on staff, to actually, I want to wear that. One of the data points we had from a retailer was that 38% of colleagues believe body-worn cameras improve their safety. That’s a really fundamental shift, isn’t it? From feeling I have to wear this and I don’t want to, to this helps my safety.

COLIN:

And we saw, didn’t we, that some retailers would say, no, I’m going to mandate it. Everyone has to wear it, and woe betide anyone I find in store not wearing it or not using it properly. Whereas others felt that making it mandatory would make people uncomfortable. You do sense that has to be the way. You have to make the case for it being helpful in their jobs, that it will make them feel safer, and to evidence that wherever you can.

EMMELINE:

Definitely. Do you know, I’d love to see data on whether there’s a correlation between the policy being optional or mandated and the number of cameras that go missing or lost. One retailer was saying that as high as 10% of their devices are untraceable at any one time. They seem to have just disappeared off the radar. Could there be some deliberate losing of devices?

COLIN:

I remember someone we worked with who was looking at Scan and Go, the handheld devices. The store manager had a real suspicion they were losing a lot of money on Scan and Go, so he just never charged them. He always said they were broken, so no one could use them, while head office wondered why there was no uptake. I think the same is true of body-worn cameras. If the store doesn’t trust them, then maybe they accidentally on purpose go missing.

The devices, the audio and the uniform

EMMELINE:

One of the other things I find so interesting is the devices themselves. They’re lighter, the memory is longer, the battery life is longer, and they’ve become slick devices that look good. But there’s still a lot of divergence in the cameras, and in the way they’re deployed. Different means of training. What is the script? When do you activate the camera? And the communication: has it got two-way audio? Can you speak to your SOC through the device, and can they speak to you? Those things are really key and fundamental.

COLIN:

You do mean the security operations centre there, as opposed to your socks and pants, things like that, right?

EMMELINE:

Of course, I mean the security operations centre. I’m sure most people know.

COLIN:

Some of them have a monitor on the side, where you can actually see yourself when the camera’s turned on. I think those are pretty cool, but I’m not sure what you think about them.

EMMELINE:

There has to be some way for the person being filmed to know the camera is active. Some have a flashing red light, or a static light. But I really like the outward-facing screen, because nobody likes to see themselves looking angry or aggressive. As part of that civilising process, that de-escalation, I think that could be an important factor. We know that just having the camera, and seeing it activated, has a really powerful effect in calming something down. And all importantly, it can provide evidence if an event does happen. For that, it’s really key to have the audio recording as well, because it provides so much context as to why something has escalated. There was a recent study that showed there are at least 18 different mechanisms on a device: outward-facing screen, audio, battery life, and so on. There are so many different devices out there.

COLIN:

Different choices. I thought one of the interesting points was that one retailer had deliberately designed their uniform to include a body-worn camera, whereas traditionally it’s on a lanyard, or sometimes a badge, somehow fixed to you. Designing it into the uniform is quite clever.

EMMELINE:

Yes, definitely. Again, it’s following the lead of law enforcement, with those years of trial and testing of how a camera can fit. For a while, cameras might be mounted on glasses or helmets. They move around the body, and that affects the angle, the quality of the footage, and how much it moves. So having the camera secured as much as possible will result in better evidence. But the early deployments just weren’t compatible with many retailers’ uniforms. If you’ve got a buttoned shirt and you’re trying to wear a camera that pulls on it, you can have a wardrobe malfunction, as it’s called. Many staff said they weren’t wearing it because it wasn’t comfortable. If this is going to be as common as wearing a name badge, it needs to be worn in a way that looks good but also feels good.

Building the business case

COLIN:

We said we’d come on to the business case, and you made the point earlier about the audio. I’ve certainly heard retailers say that having the audio and video together can mean store associates and managers don’t need to go to court to give evidence, if the evidence they have is that powerful. What have you heard people talk about in terms of building a business case for body-worn cameras?

EMMELINE:

Some of the most powerful arguments are that this isn’t a return on investment in monetary terms. It’s about having that feeling of safety, and we can see that from post-deployment surveys. It’s the confidence to work in what can be quite high-risk and volatile stores. It’s better communication. It’s the early guilty pleas you see when there’s really compelling evidence. It’s building partnership with law enforcement, and being able to get that evidence into some form of shared online evidence locker for the police to act upon. So there are multiple strands. For me, it’s really about deterrence. You want to be able to demonstrate that these cameras resulted in fewer aggressive and violent incidents, because of the power of de-escalation.

COLIN:

Yes, and to your point, if you’re a lone worker, the only person in the store, knowing that there’s someone in your security operations centre you can dial up means you probably can have lone workers, because they’re not alone. So that’s another particular area.

What comes next

COLIN:

Moving towards the end now, some people are starting to imagine that these body-worn cameras can also take pictures of the shelf and tell you whether it’s out of stock. We had one retailer doing a major pilot in America around that. What are you hearing about the next functionalities, the next iterations, and the extent to which they can help make people feel safer and protect the business?

EMMELINE:

There’s some really interesting work happening. Having the audio translate into different languages, being able to speak into the cameras to access your policies, particularly if there are disputes. So that’s interesting, the way these peripheral add-ons are being explored. But for me, these cameras are really about safety: that de-escalation, preventing violence, capturing evidence where somebody is aggressive or violent. I wouldn’t want to detract from that being their core function. If things can be added on that don’t detract from it, brilliant, or that assist that main objective. But they’ve shown such great capability that I wouldn’t want to see it watered down by, oh, what other shiny things could we add on?

COLIN:

Yes, although being able to create a transcript would probably be quite helpful, and could save some time, which might help with cultural adoption. I think we’ve also proven that this isn’t a gizmo you can simply throw over the fence from head office into the stores and hope for the best. It needs governance, oversight, clear rules, and the work behind building a culture where people feel it’s helping them feel safer. And again, that’s where uniforms can play a role. It’s been fascinating. Thank you so much, Emmeline. We’ll no doubt be back on something else.

EMMELINE:

I think we’ve got some work on risk models to cover at some stage.

COLIN:

Excited.

EMMELINE:

I’m looking forward to that one.

COLIN:

Yes, very much so. And until then, thank you very much, and we’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.

EMMELINE:

Thank you. Bye.