What you need to know
Guidance: what you need to know – violence at work
Connect takes a look at workplace
violence and considers external aggression from customers, clients
(including patients and pupils), or members of the public.
Headlines
- The British
Crime Survey 2008/09 reported approximately 305,000 threats of
violence and 321,000 physical assaults by members of the public on
British workers in the 12 months leading up to the survey
- Approximately 327,000 workers had experienced at least one
incident of violence at work
- 1.4 per cent of working adults have been victims of violent
incidents at work. However, 2.6 per cent of social welfare workers,
3.8 per cent of healthcare professionals and nine per cent of
police officers had suffered violence at work in the year preceding
the BCS survey
- In over a third of the incidents, the victim believed the
offender was under the influence of alcohol, and in nearly a fifth
of incidents under the influence of drugs
- The National Audit Office has estimated that the direct costs
of violence and aggressive attacks on employees in the NHS alone
cost at least £69 million each year.
What is it?
The Health and Safety Executive defines work-related violence as:
“any incident in which a person is
abused, threatened or assaulted in circumstances relating to their
work”.
The guide
Preventing workplace harassment and violence produced
jointly by the Trades Union Congress, Confederation of British
Industry and Partnership of Public Employers explains that
harassment and violence can:
- be physical, psychological, and/or sexual
- be a one-off incident or involve more systematic patterns of
behaviour
- be among colleagues, between superiors and subordinates, or by
third parties such as clients, customers, patients or pupils
- range from minor cases of disrespect to more serious acts,
including criminal offences, which require the intervention of
public authorities.
The British Retail Consortium retail
crime survey for 2009 showed that within the 22,000 shop
workers reporting incidents of work-related violence, only one in
five attacks were physical. Half the reported incidents were
incidents of verbal abuse, and a third were threats of
violence.
What does the law say?
Since abuse, threats and violence can affect the health, safety
and welfare of an employee, it’s a requirement of the
Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) to use all reasonably
practicable measures to prevent such abuse and violence. All
reasonably foreseeable risks should be subject to risk assessment
under the Management of Health
and Safety at Work Regulations (1999). Hence, if violence
is reasonably foreseeable, employers should protect workers by
identifying, preventing and controlling risks, and monitoring and
reviewing the effectiveness of those controls. (See below for more
details.)
If the result of any abuse or violence is an injury that would be
reportable under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and
Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR 1995), including
incapacity for normal work for more than three days, employers must
notify the HSE.
The Safety
Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations 1977 and
The
Health and Safety (Consultation with Employees) Regulations
1996 requires employers to consult employees and their
representatives on health and safety. This should include concerns
about violence. Safety committees may provide a useful channel for
workers to report violent or threatening incidents which they may
not wish to raise as individuals directly with their
employers.
Under the Corporate
Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act (2007)
organisations could be found guilty of corporate manslaughter if an
employee was killed at work because an employer didn’t fulfil its
duty of care.
When is the risk of violence ‘reasonably foreseeable’?
Workers most at risk are those who:
- provide a service: unfortunately, people
providing a caring service such as nurses or teachers are often the
target for violence at work. Shop workers, restaurant and hotel
staff are also likely to suffer abuse when a customer is
dissatisfied with the service received
- handle money: having access to money makes a
worker more prone to attack
- are mobile or lone workers: without the
protection of other workers around, mobile workers such as those
delivering to domestic premises, reading meters or providing a
service (such as pest control) are vulnerable to violence
- represent authority: people who have to impose
the law on others, such as police, traffic wardens and even school
crossing patrols, can upset members of the public who don’t accept
that their behaviour should be controlled by authority.
If you’ve workers in one or more of these groups it is ‘reasonably
foreseeable’ that they may suffer violence at work.
Why do people resort to violence?
Sometimes violence results from a deliberate act – for example,
a robber intends to steal money or goods and attacks a worker in
order to do so. Other times, the violence stems from the assailants
existing state of mind – for example, under the influence of
alcohol or drugs, or suffering from mental illness. In many cases,
however, otherwise normal customers resort to insults, threats or
physical abuse through frustration. Risk areas include:
- lack of information: for example, waiting for
a long time to be seen at a hospital or doctors, unexplained delays
on public transport
- a feeling of being unfairly penalised:
particularly common with issues like parking fines or bailiff
seizures, but can also be an issue where someone is refused a
refund in a shop because of a lost or out-of-date receipt, or an
unexpected refund policy
- dissatisfaction with a service or product: a
customer may not feel that the service or product was as described
– for example, a meal in a restaurant may not be as expected, or
there could be a dispute about how well windows have been
cleaned
- disputes about the price of something: where a
shop asks for a different price at the till to the one displayed,
or where there was no price written down – for example, a verbal
contract with a gardener, or a telephone order to a pizza delivery
service.
A future article in Connect will consider what
practical steps an organisation can take to reduce the likelihood
of violence.
HSE Links
The HSE work-related violence
sub-site lists many useful publications and case studies. The
key HSE documents are:
Other links
The TUC have a section on violence at
work within their health and safety section.
The USDAW ‘Freedom from
fear’ campaign seeks to prevent violence and abuse against shop
workers.
The
International Labour Organisation (ILO) website at includes
specific advice for education, transport, postal services and the
health service.