Some reassuring news accompanied Marks & Spencer’s results last week – the rate of coronavirus infection among its staff was no worse than among the general population.

That is encouraging as retailers prepare to welcome customers back into their stores in three weeks’ time.

It indicates that shopping is not an unduly risky activity, whether for consumers or employees.

It shows that the new fixtures of retail – such as screens, floor-markings to aid social distancing and plenty of handwashing, which have become as much part of industry terminology as bogofs and baskets – are fulfilling their function and well-run stores are not hotbeds of super-spreading. 

“Yes, it’s later than the blast-off date many had hoped for, but it does give retailers time to ensure the resumption of business as usual is a red-letter day for the right reasons”

The measures pioneered by grocers and subsequent other retailers such as B&Q have provided the wider industry with about as good a starting point as could be hoped for as preparations get underway in earnest for ‘non-essential’ retailers to open their doors to the public again on June 15.

Yes, it’s a shame that’s later than June 1, the blast-off date many had hoped for, but it does give retailers time to finesse their plans and ensure the resumption of business as usual – sort of – is a red-letter day for the right reasons.

For reopening to go as smoothly as possible, a vote of confidence is essential from two key constituencies: staff and shoppers. If either one doesn’t buy-in, then the tills could remain as silent as they’ve been since March.

Staff engagement is a government requirement for reopening. Official advice states: “Businesses will only be able to open… once they have completed a risk assessment, in consultation with trade union representatives or workers, and are confident they are managing the risks.”

“If staff are unhappy and feel exposed so will customers, and retailers can ill-afford an in-store reprise of the fear, disruption and bad PR that dogged warehouses”

For most retailers, the need to protect staff is standard common decency as well as common sense. Deloitte’s Retail Industry Sentiment Survey, which has been published weekly throughout the crisis, has consistently put workforce health and safety at the top of retailers’ priorities.

That’s as it should be, because if staff are unhappy and feel exposed so will customers, and retailers can ill-afford an in-store reprise of the fear, disruption and bad PR that dogged some of their warehouses during the early days of the crisis.

As for the customers, they will need TLC too if they are to part with their cash – or tap their contactless cards – in uncertain times. They may look forward to relaxation of the lockdown, but that might be tempered by uncertainty about their jobs and recessionary conditions.

There are reasons to be cheerful, though. Data from footfall monitor Springboard showed that on yesterday’s bank holiday footfall on high streets was up 49% compared to Easter Monday.

Last Saturday, retail park footfall was up 42% compared with Easter Saturday. There’s a bit of ‘x% of nothing is nothing’ about that, of course, but fundamentally it shows that people are willing to visit retail locations.

So, on June 15, retailers must be at the top of their game to make the most of consumers’ newfound freedom to visit shops. Barriers to sales, such as closed changing rooms and quarantining of stock touched by customers, need to be countered by executional excellence in which old skills may take on new importance.

“On reopening day shoppers must be made to feel welcome, rather than strangers in a strange land of PPE masks and zigzagging avoidance of other humans nearby”

There can never have been a more important time, for instance, to tell product stories in-store through visual merchandising excellence, giving shoppers the confidence to buy a whole look rather than picking up one item they need and hightailing it out of the shop.

There can never have been a better time either to bring the online and offline propositions ever closer – ‘seamless’ in the much-used but less often achieved jargon – so that the virus-stoked growth of online contributes to the growth of business in the round.

That might be improved by something as simple as effective marketing of click-and-collect, leveraging the economics of the store to sustain online sales growth.

More than anything, on reopening day shoppers must be made to feel welcome, rather than strangers in a strange land of PPE masks and zigzagging avoidance of other humans nearby.

Retailers typically put the customer first, and that’s what customers should feel on June 15. Even the coronavirus rules can be presented in that light, rather than as ‘elf and safety’ diktats.

When shoppers return, it represents an opportunity for retailers to rekindle relationships. It should feel like the reunion with friends or family that, unless you’re Dominic Cummings, has been denied everybody for three months.

If retailers can create a feelgood factor – or as feelgood as is possible – then the sales should follow.