How are staff excluded from footfall counts?
Staff are excluded by detecting employees and separating them from customers within the people-counting system, so that the footfall data reflects genuine visitor traffic rather than staff movement 1.
Methods used
- Some methods rely on staff wearing a specific identifier that the counting system recognises 1.
- Wearable staff tags use an RFID or Bluetooth tag detected by sensors, which flags the wearer as staff rather than as a visitor 1.
- Camera-based approaches can run on existing CCTV cameras with no extra devices, storing or transmitting no footage and producing only anonymised counts 1.
What the approaches trade off
Tag-based exclusion is highly accurate, though its accuracy depends on consistent tag use, and it carries a medium privacy consideration because staff must carry a trackable device, plus it requires tags and compatible readers or sensors 1. It suits sites that need precise real-time staff location rather than a count alone 1. Exclusion done through existing cameras suits retailers wanting accuracy with minimal extra equipment 1. Staff exclusion works without identifying individual people, and counting staff separately from visitors improves footfall accuracy, conversion rates, occupancy monitoring and retail analytics 1.
Where standards differ
Measurement standards do not all treat employees the same way. The MRC out-of-home draft standard defines venue traffic as the number of individuals estimated to be present in the venue, with employee or worker venue traffic included in traffic counts unless deemed not legitimate or invalid 2. That standard also asks that secret shoppers and other known "unnatural" visitation data be segregated 2.