Co-op staff can now choose to wear protective visors at work during pandemic

Co-op is rolling out special face visors for all colleagues.

The retailer has issued the pieces of personal protective equipment as part of its ongoing response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The wearing of the visors is not compulsory and the decision is down to individual colleagues who work in food stores and petrol stations.

The society employs more than 6,200 colleagues across its food business and recently hired an extra 1,000 to cope with increased demand.

The visors will sit alongside a range of other measures in stores aimed at keeping customers and colleagues safe including social distancing, gloves and hand sanitiser, checkout screens and security guards to help with queues.

Debbie Robinson, Central England Co-op chief executive, said: “Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our colleagues and customers.

“We’re closely following government advice in our approach to social distancing and have rolled out a range of new measures for our stores that now includes face visors for colleagues if they want to wear one.

“We continue to ask all of our customers to co-operate with these measures to keep us all safe and allow us to continue to serve our communities.”