Woolworths Group COVIDSafe response to cleaning

With a team of almost 200,000 and over 3,000 stores across almost every community in Australia, we quickly recognised the important role we needed to play as the COVID-19 pandemic increased.

Guided by health advice and looking for best practice initiatives in nations going through similar circumstances, we adopted proven safety measures and education, to help our teams play their part in supporting health and safety in their communities.

Our efforts were focussed on our 5 pillars: PPE, Health, Hygiene, Cleaning and Social Distancing.

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High and medium touch points

As retailers, we already have very high standards of cleaning and hygiene in place.

We have increased our cleaning and disinfecting routines throughout our trading day (in line with store size and rate of transmission in local community) with the focus on cleaning and disinfecting the medium and high touch points throughout our stores.

Cleaning contractors wear disposable nitrile gloves which are disposed of and replaced after each use.

Additional department cleaning

Our fresh food and checkout register teams conduct regular cleaning and disinfecting on work benches and stations and Self Checkout screens when not serving customers.

Improved products

Our Procurement team has sourced a consistent supply of hospital-grade disinfectant to support these increased cleaning practices.

Cleaning and disinfecting our PPE

We have taken a proactive approach to minimising the sharing of PPE. All our
PPE and supplied uniforms are regularly cleaned and disinfected to reduce the risk of transmission in-store (i.e. freezer jackets for teams).

Shared equipment in team spaces (such as computers) are cleaned thoroughly with disinfectant after each use.

Health and Safety Ambassadors

Health and Safety Ambassadors have been put in place in regions identified with the potential for community transmission of COVID-19.

Trolley Disinfecting Trial

We’ve commenced a trial of a Trolley Disinfecting Unit for customers to disinfect their trolley on entry to the store, should they wish to do so. This is designed to support a safer and more hygienic shopping experience for our customers.