Escalating numbers of store incidents and the growth of safety fears, suggest the need for a bigger budget for more security guards. For example, Hy-Vee recently announced a new team of guards to respond to their growing problem. Click here. Further, with wages growing, just keeping the same hours means adding 5-6% to the budget.

Not surprisingly, when senior retailer leaders are presented with the new costs of guarding, they begin [again!] to challenge the budget and the guarding model, and to ask the team to think about ways to reduce the budget (use risk models to reduce spend in non-essential stores, share the guarding with other retailers, in-source the guarding team Vs outsource it, ask store associates to "double" as guards, etc) or to use technology (remote monitoring centres, smart shelves, etc) or in one case, to completely re-think the profile of guarding and explore alternative models that are more community based, Click here to read a USA example.

In this session, we will hear from S Group, Whole Foods and other retailers on their latest thinking and new ideas, the group will then discuss the cases presented and share back how they are thinking about guarding.

This working group is for retailers and CPG's only. There is no cost to participate.