Employee training on emergency management in the new generation retail outlets of Kerala

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyze the readiness of the employees of new generation retail outlets of Kerala to handle an unexpected emergency situation. The state of Kerala, a little, long stripped land in the southern tip of India has the largest population density in the country (860people/km²-2011 census). It is more vulnerable to population disasters because of its high density population and high standard of living. Records show that in the last 80 years, there has been a change in its population profile, a shift from the basic agrarian society to an urbanized consumerist society. The result is an increase in the total number of shops from 2, 31,046 in 2004 to 2, 87, 598 in 2015, with more organized and professionalized management. About 50 malls have come up in the State in the last three years and all these developments in a state were about 14.5% of the area is prone to floods and 14.4% of the area to landslides. This is one of the reason why Kerala has to be more conscious about its safety measures. And making this data even worse, the recent floods (2018) that affected the state has proved more fatal than before as all the fourteen districts were affected. The data presented in this study was collected six months prior to this recent emergency situation and was mainly focused on knowing the precautions existing in outlets with respect to employee training, to handle the most common disasters that may happen. Data was collected using an interview schedule. The analysis shows varying results as the knowledge and preparations of the staff of the outlets in most of the places is not enough to make them confident about their emergency management competence.