Loss prevention practitioners, ORC investigators, and managers encounter many different types of stressors, including stressful events, conditions, and contexts. However, while there is research on stressors in many other professions, there is little research that examines stressors in the loss prevention profession.
Therefore, in this year’s ORC across the States survey, the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) included a list of items that describe aspects of working in security, loss prevention, and investigations, and asked the respondents to indicate how much stress each of these caused them over the past six months on a scale from one (no stress at all) to seven (a lot of stress). 276 respondents, including 154 multi-store LP managers and 122 practitioners with an ORC-specific role, completed this portion of the survey.
Their responses are summarized in Table 1 below, including the average response for each stressor and each stressors’ rank for each group. The ranks have been color-coded to make rankings easier to compare; stressors that are ranked higher are color-coded with warmer colors and those with lower ranks for each group are color-coded with cooler colors.
The results show that, while there are many similarities among the stressors for multi-store LP managers and those with an ORC-specific role, there are also several differences. For example, on average, both groups ranked “feeling like you are always on the job,” “lacking the necessary tools or software,” and “eating healthy at work” as generating more stress than many of the other stressors.
Similarly, on average, both groups reported that “negative comments from the public,” “Upholding a higher image in public,” “interacting with the public,” “interacting with store employees,” and “physical demands of the job” did not generate much stress.
However, the two groups differed in several regards. For example, multi-store LP managers tended to rate “executives’ lack of understanding about [their] job” and “finding time to stay in good physical condition” as more stressful than those with ORC roles. Alternatively, those with ORC roles tended to rate “paperwork,” “changing or irregular work shifts,” “overtime demands,” and occupation-related injuries and risks higher than multi-store LP managers.
Overall, these results show that these groups experience similarities and differences in stressors. Some of these stressors may be inherent to the nature of these jobs, but, if there are opportunities to address these stressors, retail companies should attempt to do so.
The full results of the ORC Across the States study are being issued in a series of reports on the LPM site. The LPRC would like to thank Sensormatic for their generous support of this survey. Watch the LPM site for upcoming articles detailing the fascinating results of this survey, including: how ORC is changing, violence and ORC, and more!