GUIDANCE FOR NON-ESSENTIAL RETAIL BUSINESSES – MANAGING DELIVERIES/STOCK

Business Isle of Man has released further guidance for non-essential Retail businesses ahead of the estimated lifting of restrictions on Monday 19th April. Non-essential Retail businesses must still remain closed to the public but may offer a collection/delivery service for customers provide social distancing and hygiene measures are followed.

At present we’d expect only Essential Retail to have frequent deliveries and Non-Essential Retail to be asking staff to remain at home wherever possible. However, we understand some businesses are preparing to re-open in advance with stock deliveries arriving over the next two weeks following the Chief Minister’s estimation restrictions may ease on 19^th April.

Where possible, businesses are encouraged to hold off on purchasing or unpacking stock as staff should be encouraged to stay at home. The Department for Enterprise will endeavour to give businesses plenty of notice regarding reopening as soon as we have a better picture of the situation.

However, if businesses do wish to consider asking staff to return to work to manage stock/deliveries they may do so provided a risk assessment is completed prior to the decision being made and methods to reduce the number of staff visiting the store and for a minimal time are considered. It remains good practice to reduce the frequency of deliveries or stop them where possible, for example, by ordering larger quantities less often.

All reasonable measures must be put in place to ensure that a 2m distance is maintained between members of staff working on-site, as with delivery/collection services. With large and heavy goods that can’t safely be lifted by one individual, it could be assumed that social distancing would be breeched and therefore this is high risk activity. Serious consideration over if this is absolutely necessary is key and a risk assessment completed. Guidance on risk assessments can be found here: https://covid19.gov.im/businesses/risk-assessment-guidance-note/

Ways to mitigate risks:

*Require each member of staff to wear PPE (gloves and masks)

*Keep staff members to a minimum at all times. Use smaller numbers of staff more frequently over more members of staff less frequently

*Keep a rota to ensure you have a record of who is in-store at any time

*Implement a ‘buddy’ system with staff where more than one person may be required for a single task

*Where equipment is used, allocate equipment to each member of staff where possible and consider labelling this

*Deliveries to be unloaded from a single point on the premise, using one door for instance if there is more than one area to see deliveries come in

*Provide clear instruction to drivers delivering and inform them of your policies in advance

*Allocate certain members of staff to receive/handle goods directly

*Consider a 72 hour ‘cool off’ period where goods delivered are not handled for this duration/handling is minimised

*Share your risk assessment and communicate instruction/policy clearly with staff, circulate in advance of staff arriving on the premises where possible.