Retailers launch $7m reminder to be kind to staff this Christmas
A $7 million campaign has been launched because Australian shoppers cannot behave
A big collective of shopping centre owners, retail chains, fuel companies, pharmacies, security firms, and cleaning industry groups have pooled resources to launch a $7 million campaign reminding Christmas shoppers not to abuse retail staffers.
The nationwide “Be Kind in Retail” campaign will run throughout the Christmas trading period on 3,500 digital screens across 350 shopping centres.
According to a media release issued by peak body Shopping Centre Council of Australia, the campaign aims to “combat the alarming levels of abuse, intimidation, violence — often with the use of dangerous weapons — towards retail workers, pharmacy staff, cleaners, security officers and shopping centre staff”.
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The campaign is a joint venture between the Shopping Centre Council, the Pharmacy Guild, National Retail Association, Australian Association of Convenience Stores, Australian Security Industry Association Limited, and Building Service Contractors Association of Australia. The creative was handled by Porter Novelli, in consultation with the various bodies.
The campaign at Macarthur Square
Shopping centre violence has hit worrying levels across Australia.
Late last month, the NSW Government launched its new “retail crime strategy” with the NSW Police rolling out Operation Percentile, a “comprehensive and intelligence-led approach to tackling serious retail crime and protecting retail workers, customers, and precincts”.
Last week, the South Australian Government introduced legislation to create workplace protection orders for tackling serious retail crime and protecting retail workers, customers, and precincts.
In the 12 months to March 2025, Victorian retail crime hit an all-time high, with over 41,000 cases.
Nationally, overall theft hit 595,660 incidents last year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, with 45% of this crime happening in stores — the highest amount since 2003.
In August, Crime Stoppers Australia launched a national advertising campaign imploring shopping to speak up about crime or suspicious activity in shopping centres.
Last week, at Wesfarmers’ annual general meeting, the company’s managing director Rob Scott reported that “customer threatening incidents” had increased by 29% across Kmart and Target, while “serious violent incidents” at Bunnings had increased by 66%.
Across Wesfarmers’ retail stores, which also includes Officeworks and Priceline, over 1,000 physical assaults were reported in the past year.
“We recorded more than 13,500 customer threatening incidents across our retail stores, including several hundred involving weapons,” Scott said.
“Our team members must be safe and respected at work.”
Kindness is in style at Grand Central
Luke Sikora, the SCCA’s head of stakeholder engagement tells Mumbrella this campaign is about taking a zero-tolerance policy towards shopping centre violence.
“With the increase in violence, abuse, intimidation and other inappropriate behaviour towards retail workers, security guards, cleaners and centre staff, it’s really important that the industry have a firm view that any incident towards a retail staff member is simply unacceptable. And this campaign goes a long way in showing the united front with five industry groups, including retailers, security guards, cleaners and centre staff, that it simply won’t be tolerated.”
Sikora said that the campaign is necessary due to “an across the board increase in violence, intimidation, abuse against retail workers”.
“As we lead into the busy Christmas season, this is the peak shopping season of the year. So we’re seeing more and more people attend our shopping centres. So now is really the time to remind everyone to treat everyone with kindness and respect and perhaps display a bit more patience towards workers who each and every day are under pressure, but more so at the Christmas season.”
Marrickville Metro gets in the spirit
There are 1.4 million retail employees across Australia, according to the Australian Retail Association.
Woolworths employees over 200,000 people, and is one of the many partners in the kindness push. In the SCCA’s media release, the grocery giant’s head of violence prevention Sarah Faorlin said: “The level of violence and aggression that our team members are impacted by on a daily basis is unacceptable”.
She continued: “It’s important to remember that our team members are mothers, fathers, sons and daughters — many of them young people in their first job — and they come to work to help customers. Their safety should be non-negotiable.”
The campaign started rolling out on Wednesday, and will be in stores and malls nationwide until December 24.
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