Retailers Rethink Inventory Counting Strategies
New Research Challenges Retailers to Rethink Inventory Counting

By the D&D Daily staff

For retailers, an inaccurate inventory record can create problems well beyond the stockroom. New research suggests retailers may be able to improve inventory accuracy by becoming more selective about when and where they count merchandise.

Researchers working with ECR Retail Loss recently examined more than 1.3 million stock-audit observations from six major grocery retailers to better understand inventory record inaccuracies and how retailers can address them.

The findings suggest that stock errors are often predictable, opening the door for retailers to target products most likely to have inaccurate inventory records rather than relying primarily on traditional counting schedules.

The issue has implications across retail operations and loss prevention. When a retailer's system indicates an item is available but the product cannot actually be found, the discrepancy can contribute to lost sales, poor product availability and unnecessary replenishment. Inaccurate records can also make it more difficult for loss prevention teams to determine where losses are occurring.

ECR Retail Loss is now taking the research a step further, announcing a new project this month examining how retailers approach inventory counting. Current practices vary significantly, with some companies counting every product annually, others conducting counts more frequently and some moving away from traditional full inventory counts altogether.

The research reflects a broader shift taking place within the loss prevention industry toward examining sources of loss beyond theft alone.

Retailers are increasingly looking at operational errors, inventory inaccuracies and process failures as part of a more comprehensive picture of retail loss. That approach can also give LP teams a larger role in identifying where inaccurate data originates and determining which processes may need attention.

For retailers, better inventory accuracy ultimately means knowing not only what merchandise should be in the building, but what is actually there — and focusing resources where discrepancies are most likely to occur.


AI Safety in the Workplace
Worker Trust is the Missing Control in AI Safety

AI tools can improve hazard detection and safety decision-making, but their effectiveness depends on whether workers trust how organizations collect and use the data.

This happens when leaders treat worker trust as a communications issue rather than an operational control. If employees fear how managers will use AI-generated information, they may avoid the system, work around it, withhold context or stop reporting mistakes. Technical accuracy cannot compensate for missing information and defensive behavior.

A recent survey found that 75% of surveyed safety leaders trust AI-generated insights. That finding shows growing confidence among decision-makers. But do the workers affected by those insights share that confidence?

Trusting AI does not mean accepting every recommendation. Blind confidence creates its own safety hazard. Workers and supervisors need enough confidence to use the technology but with enough skepticism to question an output that conflicts with conditions on the ground.

By calibrated trust, I mean confidence matched to the system's demonstrated reliability and to the consequences of being wrong. Workers should know when they can rely on an output, when they should verify it and when they must escalate it to a human decision-maker.

That balance belongs at the center of AI safety. The National Institute of Standards and Technology frames trustworthy AI around characteristics such as reliability, transparency, accountability, privacy protection and the management of harmful bias. These qualities require more than a technically capable model. They require an organizational process that lets people identify, communicate and correct problems. ehstoday.com


One Resource for Safety Professionals
NSC Launches New Safety Training Platform

"With SafetyAtlas, the National Safety Council is creating something the safety profession has long needed: a single connected destination for trusted safety resources and guidance,” said Nick Smith, NSC president.

Hoping to ease the current safety landscape, where organizations often must navigate between multiple providers, catalogs and systems to find, assign and track safety training, the National Safety Council, America’s announced the launch of NSC SafetyAtlas.

The platform integrates safety training, credentials, resources and services from NSC, participating NSC Chapters and nonprofit and industry partners in a singular online destination.

Grounded in NSC research and best practices, SafetyAtlas provides a simplified user experience by combining a curated marketplace and learning management system into one cross-functional platform where leaders, managers and frontline workers can procure and manage learning, maintain credentials and run comprehensive reports.

“With SafetyAtlas, the National Safety Council is creating something the safety profession has long needed: a single connected destination for trusted safety resources and guidance,” said Nick Smith, NSC president, in a statement. ehstoday.com


What Fuels Workplace Stress?
Research: Work Stress Isn’t Always About Workload
Amid layoffs, corporate restructuring, and role expansion (as employees try to keep up with AI outputs), your workforce is feeling stressed out. In Gallup’s latest State of the Global Workplace report, 40% of employees worldwide said they had experienced “a lot of stress” the previous day, and 56% said they were struggling.

This stress is often attributed to growing workloads. In a 2025 survey of more than 1,100 HR and management professionals in the United Kingdom, heavy workloads were the most commonly cited cause among organizations reporting stress-related absence.

Workload is only one kind of workplace stressor, and it may not always be the most damaging one.

In a recent meta-analysis, we reviewed 60 years of research—encompassing 515 studies involving nearly 788,000 employees around the world—to take a close look at three major role-related stressors: role ambiguity, or when employees lack the information they need to understand what is expected of them or how their work will be evaluated; role conflict, which occurs when employees face incompatible demands, priorities, or expectations; and role overload, which occurs when employees have more work than they can reasonably complete. hbr.org


Dollar General CEO raises major red flag about consumers
For months, economists and retailers have warned about the financial strain facing lower- and middle-income consumers. Higher earners, on the other hand, have largely been sheltered from the effects of the rising costs of living. But that may be changing.

UK: Retail employment drops to record low as sector loses 32,000 jobs in a year
Data shows part-time roles at historic low as trade body warns rising costs threaten entry-level jobs

What affects prices at small retail businesses?

Traffic Fatalities Down Slightly in First Half of 2026

Last week's #1 article --

Repeat Offender Risk
Repeat Offenders Remain at the Center of Retail Theft
Retail theft statistics can measure incidents. They don't always reveal who is responsible for them.

That distinction remains important as retailers attempt to understand an evolving theft environment. NRF's latest research shows that while overall shoplifting incidents declined between 2024 and 2025, repeat offenders and organized retail crime remain significant concerns.

Half of retailers reported an increase in repeat-offender activity, while 40% reported an increase in ORC-related shoplifting.

For asset protection teams, repeat activity changes the nature of the problem.

An isolated shoplifting event may create a relatively contained loss. A prolific offender repeatedly targeting the same retailer, multiple locations or several retailers can produce a much larger cumulative impact.

It also creates an intelligence opportunity.

Individual incidents that appear unrelated at the store level can begin forming recognizable patterns when retailers connect information across locations — merchandise targeted, methods used, vehicles, timing, identities and potential resale activity.

That is one reason information sharing has become increasingly important to organized retail crime investigations. It also demonstrates the limitations of evaluating store performance exclusively through incident totals.

Two stores could experience the same number of theft events while facing substantially different risks if one location is being repeatedly targeted by individuals connected to a larger operation.

The industry has invested heavily in deterrence and store-level security in recent years, and NRF's latest numbers suggest some of those efforts are contributing to declining shoplifting incidents. But fewer incidents don't necessarily mean less organized activity.

If repeat offenders account for a disproportionate share of loss, identifying and connecting those events becomes just as important as preventing an individual theft.

The next incident report may therefore be valuable for more than documenting what happened at one store on one day.

Placed alongside information from other locations and retailers, it could become the piece that turns a series of seemingly routine thefts into a larger investigation. nrf.com