S1 Ep 18
Bodyworn Cameras in retail - How Effective are They?
This week Professor Adrian Beck reports back on his new research on the effectiveness of body worn cameras in retail stores.
He joins Colin Peacock to explore how these devices can improve staff safety, evidence gathering, and lead to a reduction of in-store incidents.
Podcast summary
Cleaned transcript
Introduction
COLIN:
Bodyworn cameras in retail are increasingly being used in UK and around the world.
This week I’m joined by Professor Adrian Beck. We’ll be discussing the key findings from his recent report on the effectiveness, use, and staff and consumer reactions to bodyworn cameras in retail.
Why the research was done
COLIN:
This week we had a meeting of the video working group. We had about 60 retailers join the call to hear you talk about your new research on the use of bodyworn cameras in retail.
There was a huge level of interest from across the world. A lot of American retailers on there, many British retailers, of course, and Europeans.
So a really interesting set of retailers listening to what you had to say.
The report is available to download from the website. But perhaps just to give a flavour of what is in the report, could you share maybe two or three key takeaways, or questions that retailers need to think about on this particular technology?
ADRIAN:
It’s really great to get this out there. It’s taken me about a year to do this research.
It grew out of growing concern amongst the retail community about problems related to violence and verbal abuse that their staff have been experiencing, and also concerns about rising levels of retail crime, which has been hitting the headlines around the world for probably the last 12 months.
Retailers are asking: should we be investing in bodyworn cameras? What can they do for us? Do they have value in dealing with some of these issues?
In some countries they’ve been in use for quite a while. Certainly in the United Kingdom there have been a number of retailers using them for several years now.
In other countries they simply haven’t been used. In the USA, for instance, we’re seeing growing interest, but still some concerns around privacy. In other countries they’re not being used at all.
My research was trying to understand how people have been using them and what the potential value might be.
Deterrence, de‑escalation and “risk amplification”
ADRIAN:
The research generally found that retailers are investing in this technology primarily to try to deter people who are likely to commit violence and verbal abuse, and also to try to de‑escalate those situations.
The idea is that the camera makes a much more visible representation of the risk amplification idea, which is: “If you continue to be verbally abusing me, to be threatening and using threatening behaviour, then I’m going to turn this camera on and I’m going to record you.”
We know from other research that when that happens, for quite a lot of people it amplifies their sense of awareness and it begins to de‑escalate situations in some circumstances.
COLIN:
Your report was really good at bringing out that it’s not every type of offender who is going to be deterred by this. I thought that was a really important point.
ADRIAN:
That’s right. It’s one of these things we’ve often talked about, which is there is not one panacea that’s going to fix all the problems of retail crime and loss.
People have often tried to sell them, but sadly what you require is a whole multitude of ways in which you deal with a multitude of problems.
The research found that body‑worn cameras in retail certainly have a role to play in perhaps the higher‑risk stores, as long as they’re part of a broader suite of interventions.
They won’t work on their own.
Stores that are at risk of crime, violence and verbal abuse need to be well designed. Staff need to be well trained. They need to be able to communicate with each other. The strategy within the organisation as a whole needs to take account of the risk landscape.
For some stores you won’t need these because the risk of violence and verbal abuse is very low. But for other high‑risk areas, the research was generally very positive.
Used in the right way and within the right context, bodyworn cameras seem to have a pretty good role to play.
Staff Acceptance of Bodywork Cameras in Retail Stores
COLIN:
We heard about lone workers, didn’t we? We heard about van drivers as well.
What was interesting about the meeting was that it wasn’t a slam dunk. We had extremes.
We had one retailer say this is the best thing they’ve ever done, more or less. But another was a bit more tentative, not really sure about this.
One retailer did a study of 800 staff members and found only 50% of them actually wanted to have the bodyworn cameras.
So it’s not something you can go ahead and do without giving it a lot of thought. That seems to be the message. This needs to be thought through all the way up and across the organisation.
ADRIAN:
As I say, it should be part of a broader strategy. We want to get away from the days where somebody’s just looking for the widget that will fix loss.
For some staff, they don’t want to wear it. You have to think about that in terms of the broader organisational culture.
Do we want these cameras in our stores? How will customers feel about this? How will staff feel about wearing them, particularly retail staff?
I found some examples where retailers were only putting them in their highest‑risk stores, and sometimes only putting them there for a while. Staff felt reassured by that.
Then the rates of use went down and they decided to take them out and move them elsewhere.
So I think you’re right. It’s about making sure that if you are going to invest in them, you invest in them wisely. You think through how they’re going to be used and in what circumstances.
When you do that, as with a lot of interventions we see in retailing, if you think it through, you’ll probably get some good results from it.
Practical choices for bodyworn cameras in retail: device features and deployment
COLIN:
As you said, there are quite a few forks in the road as well.
Does it have a camera? Does it have an image facing out? How do you attach it to the uniform?
That seemed to be quite important, because often they can be dangling in the wrong place. There are important choices to be made there.
Some of the headline numbers were interesting. It was really good that you shared the results from that mass‑transit setting. Was it about a 47% reduction in incidents when it was used in lots of train stations versus not in lots of train stations?
I sensed that the robustness of the data from the retailers you were able to gather wasn’t as strong. But were there some numbers that people can take away and think: if I did this, it’s an X percent reduction in incidents?
What the numbers say (and their limits)
ADRIAN:
You’re right. It was challenging getting hard quantitative data built upon robust methodologies.
It’s an age‑old problem we’ve had within our world of retail research. Retailers are not data collectors, they’re retailers.
Their job is to sell products, keep customers happy, make a profit.
My job as an academic and researcher is to try to get really robust methodologies and data that I feel confident is giving me a representation of the truth.
Some retailers were able to share numbers on how they tried to measure reductions in levels of violence and verbal abuse, which is one of the key measures you could have with bodyworn cameras in retail environments.
On average, those who were able to share said they’d seen a reduction of about 37% in the number of incidents. It ranged from around 13% to as high as nearly 70%.
But the underlying numbers were very small. You’re looking at shifts in numbers, for instance from 12 to 5 in the number of incidents. So you’ve got to be very careful with the problem.
Staff perceptions and the “comfort blanket” effect of bodywork cameras in retail
ADRIAN:
Where retailers were a little bit stronger was when they’d done perception surveys of staff who were using them, because that’s easier data to collect in some respects.
We found that generally staff do feel safer when they’re wearing these cameras. It’s like a comfort blanket.
There’s a sense that it gives them a feeling that the company is taking their problems seriously: “Look, we’re investing in your security.”
The big thing about this is that you and I know video technologies have been around retailing for 50 years now. This is not a new technology.
Overall, its impact has been quite modest in terms of reducing retail crime and loss. You can see the numbers are going up and yet every retail store has lots of video technologies in there.
I think this speaks to the issue of what we call dosage.
People are now so familiar with video in stores that they don’t see it anymore. They don’t recognise it. Therefore it doesn’t have that deterrent impact because it’s just part of the wallpaper of retailing.
I think what body‑worn cameras are very good at is really amplifying that sense of dosage.
It’s there. It’s on the chest of the person you’re now shouting at. You can see that it’s going to begin to record you if they press that button and you see your face.
