When enough is enough. Too many retail and fast food workers are abused at work from swearing and spitting to threatening and physical violence. Customer aggression and violence isn’t a new workplace hazard and retail workers have reported increased incidents of abusive and aggressive customer behaviour with a recent survey by the SDA, the union for retail, warehouse and fast food workers, finding that 87% of retail employees had experienced customer abuse. During COVID we saw increased unacceptable behaviour, but this hasn’t trended downwards. Woolworths aggression towards team members continues to be an increasing area of concern in F23 with more than 3,000 acts of violence, threats and abuse reported in the past 12 months. Woolworths and SDA will co-facilitate a collaborative discussion with engagement of other key Retailers co-presenting along with representation from our front line teams on this topic. Across the various groups, we will showcase some of the risk controls that are already well tested and embedded such as body worn cameras, two way radios, data lead insights into design, along with new concepts being piloted and trialled such as Virtual Reality Training, duress watches and other concepts being considered. We encourage a diverse audience to attend and also discuss the challenges, opportunities and what you’re doing or considering both in this region, but also we are excited to hear and learn from international delegates across the world as we collectively tackle this challenge together, with the power of “We”; underpinned by Woolworths purpose of “we create better experiences together for a better tomorrow” with the collective engagement of team, employers and our unions.