From Unsafe to Engaged: Leading Safety on the Retail Frontline

Psychological safety isn't something you roll out through a training programme or a poster on the wall. It's built through small, incremental moments every day, through what leaders do and the things they say.

- Benny Mathews

About this session

Picture a retail floor on a Saturday afternoon: a new starter on their third shift, a forklift reversing in the warehouse, a customer getting heated at the service desk. Constant motion, constant change, a workforce that might look completely different in six months. That's where safety leadership matters the most.

Often the bigger risk is invisible: how safe people feel to speak up before something goes wrong. Benny Mathews calls this "unsafety," the instinct to stay quiet rather than flag a concern, which can turn a near-miss into something worse.

In this session of the Safety Voices webinar series, host Craig Bleakley sat down with Benny, who leads the Health, Safety & Wellbeing strategy for Kmart and Target, to bring his psychological safety model to the realities of the shop floor.

Unsafety and the three dimensions of safety

Benny uses the term "unsafety" to capture that moment: the instinct that decides not to say "actually, that doesn't feel right,” even when policies and training are in place.

He reaches for it because "psychologically safe" isn't language that comes up naturally on a shop floor, but everyone knows what it feels like to be unsafe. It shows up everywhere: in a new starter on their third shift, and just as easily in a seven-year veteran walking into a room full of people they see as more senior.

Genuine safety rests on three dimensions that all have to work together:

1. Physical safety. The environment, equipment and hazards people are exposed to.

2. Psychological safety. Whether people feel safe enough to speak up before something goes wrong.

3. Social safety. Whether people feel like they belong and have someone in their corner.

Manual handling is a good example of the three in action:

• Physical. The lift itself: technique, load, equipment.
• Social. Whether a teammate will actually help if asked, or whether people hesitate to slow the task down.
• Psychological. Whether a heavy workload means skipping a step under pressure.

When one dimension is missing, the whole system gets fragile, no matter how solid the other two look on paper.

Key takeaways from the session

1. What drives safer decisions: autonomy, competence and belonging

Self-determination theory names three needs behind safer decisions: autonomy, competence and belonging. New starters carry real pride and pressure into their first shift, and telling them to "ask if you're unsure" means little if the answer mid-shift is "just wait a sec, I'm serving a customer."

2. Simplicity is a leadership skill, not a shortcut

Posters and campaigns set the tone, but they don't change behaviour on their own. The real test: strip away the corporate messaging, and would people still speak up, still help each other out, still flag something that doesn't feel right?

3. Manager support is what people remember most

Body-worn cameras, de-escalation training and security guards all matter and staff want them in place. But what stays with people after an incident is whether their manager checked in on them that day, the next day and the week after.

4. Redefining what "safety success" looks like