Defusing potentially violent situations in the workplace is something that all employers need to be prepared for. Phil Boucher of Personneltoday.com talks to those taking a proactive approach.
Most employers have to deal with angry customers and irate members of staff at some stage, but very few go down the route of some London schools and hire nightclub bouncers and ex-soldiers as cover in response, as reported at the National Union of Teachers’ annual conference in April.
Yet this doesn’t mean employers and their HR departments can stand still in the face of workplace aggression.
In 2007-08, the Health and Safety Executive calculate that 6,170 injuries were caused by violence at work. The British Crime Survey (BCS) also indicates that UK workers endured more than 397,000 threats of violence and 288,000 physical assaults by members of the public in 2006-07. These resulted in four fatalities, 932 major injuries and 5,468 injuries requiring a minimum of three days’ absence from work.
Duty of care
For the most part these attacks were directed against public-facing organisations such as the police and NHS, but this is an issue that all employers need to address – not least because they have a legal duty to take reasonable care for the wellbeing of their staff.
“Whether you are talking about a hospital or train journey, organisations have to ask ‘what are we doing to reduce conflict?’,” says Bill Fox, chairman of conflict management specialists Maybo.
Within Transport for London (TfL) this question has already been answered thanks to a ‘violence audit’ carried out by the HR team in 2001.
It revealed aggression against TfL staff to be a far bigger problem than imagined, despite the organisation historically collecting mountains of data on the issue. As a direct result, the joint London Underground/British Transport Police Workplace Violence Unit (WVU) was set up in 2006 to address physical violence, threats and abuse against TfL’s 10,000 staff.
“Our three aims are to improve the level and standard of staff assault investigation, to enhance care to victims, and ensure that more cases are successfully prosecuted,” says WVU manager Aiden Harris.
Staff training
A key part of this has been the introduction of staff training in defusing techniques, where each member of the TfL workforce is taught to use their body language and vocal tones to prevent arguments from escalating. At the same time, a wider programme of cultural change is underway to help nip potential problems in the bud by training staff to focus as much on customer service as shunting carriages around as efficiently as possible. Tube drivers and platform staff now make announcements whenever a train stops for longer than 30 seconds in a tunnel, and provide regular updates on service levels across the Underground network.
“It is all designed to try to defuse tension, because at the end of the day it is the poor person on the station gate who’s likely to get it in the neck,” adds Harris.
Yet one of TfL’s most important innovations has been even more basic than this: spit kits. These were introduced in 2004 to tackle the problem of irate passengers spitting at TfL staff, and contain a swab stick and sterile bag so staff can take a sample of the saliva and send it off to the police national database for analysis. It may sound disgusting, but the kits have helped trace 70% of culprits and are now being used by London Buses and a number of other rail companies.
Crucially, TfL rigorously prosecutes any offenders it catches and keeps staff informed as the cases progresses. It firmly delivers the message that management is prepared to do more than simply make policies and introduce training: they are also willing and able to take action when an incident occurs.
Conflict Management
It has been suggested that conflict management is the weak link. Many companies have a protocol to deal with violent incidents and good procedures to debrief people after an incident, but then let themselves down because they don’t rehearse what to do if something actually goes wrong.
The consequences of not maintaining this link between policy and action can be seen in the NHS. According to the latest Health Commission staff survey, more than one in 10 NHS workers (12%) experienced physical violence from patients or their relatives in 2008, while nearly one-quarter (23%) experienced bullying, harassment and verbal abuse from patients, and 18% from either their line manager or colleagues.
The level of physical violence against NHS staff has now failed to improve for four years in a row, despite record numbers of workers being trained to handle abuse – 28% of staff took training in prevention of violence and aggression techniques, up from 26% in 2007.
Lack of support
David Guest, professor of organisational psychology and HR management at London’s King’s College Hospital, suggests the disparity is being created by two main factors: a feeling of a lack of support from the NHS hierarchy, so staff don’t believe their reports are going to be taken seriously; plus a lack of faith in the existing systems to address any problems they do flag up.
Professor Guest said “It’s not a question of just training staff and having these wonderful policies in place, but of HR making sure it is being effectively implemented through the ranks of middle and junior management.”
Or put another way: if you talk the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk.
beSmart Training delivers the Maybo SAFERWork Programme under licence at their London training centre in Rotherhithe. The programme includes conflict management training, disengagement techniques and, if necessary, there is also a course that covers holding and guiding techniques. All physical intervention training is non-aggressive, non-violent and non-joint manipulation. For more details visit our website at www.besmart-training.co.uk, or click the link.
