The dangerous lives of retail and healthcare workers in 2023

During the pandemic, frontline workers were hailed as heroes. Now that masks have come off and vaccines have gone in, frontline workers are still heroes—except they aren’t being treated as such: 58% say physical harm at their jobs is on the rise.

In a new study, security platform company Verkada surveyed 1,000 employees to understand what frontline workers face. It included people working in industries such as consumer banking, healthcare, hospitality, and retail. Here are some of the key highlights:

• Frontline workers don’t feel safe: One-third of frontline workers felt unsafe at their jobs last year, while 40% are more worried about physical safety than they were a year ago. Last year, 76% of employers had a security incident, with 80% of banking and healthcare reporting an incident. Meanwhile, 49% of retail workers say theft and vandalism are on the rise.
• Which contributes to a labor shortage: A quarter of people have turned down job opportunities because they were worried about their safety, and over 50% of frontline employees say they plan to quit within the next year if their employers don’t improve safety. Meanwhile, two thirds say they would quit their jobs if they could afford to, and cite safety as the reason. Yet, 67% of leaders think their direct reports feel safe, when only 37% of workers report feeling safe.
• There’s a generational gap in perceptions of safety: One-third of Gen Z and millennial workers have encountered a situation at work where they felt their life was endangered, compared to 15% of Gen X and 6% of baby boomers. Only a quarter of baby boomers worry about active shooter situations compared to 59% of Gen Z.

“I have watched many of my coworkers be attacked by our patients in the last year and nothing has been changed by our management,” one survey respondent commented. Another noted: “I have become more concerned about physical safety because we never know when a shoplifter is armed.”