Customer-Initiated Violence: Some tips to minimising the risks

Customer-initiated violence is an ever-present concern among front-line employees in many organisations across Aotearoa. In this post, FIRST Security’s GM Strategic Accounts, Brian Switalla, provides a refresher on this issue and looks at some of the available guidance.

 

According to the Government Health & Safety Lead’s Good Practice Guide: Dealing with Customer-initiated Aggression and Violence, “some workers, such as those delivering difficult front-line services, have a higher risk [of customer aggression] than others.”

The Good Practice Guide, published in July 2019 to support government organisations to think about how they and their workers deal with the risk of aggressive customers, provides some worthwhile guidance (detailed below) although it begs the question: what does ‘higher risk’ actually mean?

In the April 2018 edition of its news publication E tū and you, the E tū union reported that it had conducted a survey on customer-initiated (or client-initiated) violence (CIV). The internet survey, which elicited 292 responses, found that 199 respondents had reported an incident over the past year.

“This included being punched, kicked and spat at – in all, a total of 424 incidents. Some workers required extensive treatment, counselling and time off work.”

Since then – and the arrival of COVID – we’ve witnessed an apparent upsurge in CIV as acts of aggression have played out in supermarkets, hospitals, retail queues, and on telephone enquiry lines, sometimes resulting in hospitalisation and often leading to time off work.

What is Customer-Initiated Violence?

According to New Zealand publication Industrial Safety News, “Client-initiated violence is violence committed by an individual who has, or has had a service relationship with the victim or the victim’s organisation.”

Such an incident may involve a one-off physical act of violence that results in a fatal or non-fatal injury (or no obvious injury); a threat or verbal abuse (ranging from covert threats, overt intimidation and physical assaults with or without weapons).

According to WorkSafe guidance on violence in relation to customer service areas, so far as is reasonably practicable, a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) “must ensure the health and safety of workers, and ensure that others are not put at risk from your work.” This includes the risk of harm from violence occuring in the workplace.

Minimising risks

Although written with government organisations in mind, the Good Practice Guide: Dealing with Customer-initiated Aggression and Violence, contains insights that are just as applicable to client-facing private sector organisations.

According to the Guide, if eliminating the risk is not practicable, then organisations should consider how they can minimise the risk of violence and aggression. Because it is unlikely a single solution will mitigate all of the risks, it is good practice “to consider a number of strategies.” Examples of mitigations listed by the Guide include:

• identify and analyse factors that create or exacerbate the risk of aggression and violence. This may reveal what motivates violence or uncover trend that may inform planning.
• use the above analysis to inform service design and delivery. “If frustration from queues or talking to multiple customer service workers across different service channels creates aggravation then good service design may address those factors.”
• Provide workers with the tools and training they need to recognise and respond to escalating aggression.
• Ensure the organisation has “strong organisational policies and procedures that make it clear that inappropriate/aggressive behaviour and violence are not acceptable,” and make these policies visible and clear to customers.
• Undertake risk assessments and risk planning ahead of time. This can include training staff to identify potential threats, vulnerabilities, and risks; having a more systematised approach to identifying and managing risks and threats; and analysing events and near-misses to identify lessons learnt.
• Make workplaces less of a target for aggravated robbery by eliminating or reducing valuables being held in front-facing areas.
• Implement architectural security measures, electronic security controls, and other measures as appropriate to mitigate the risk.

It’s important to note that the above guidance serves only as an introduction to what is a complex and critically important issue. Customer-initiated violence continues to pose a risk to customer-facing employees, and the dynamics shaping this risk are constantly changing.

If you’d like to discuss how to keep your people safe, feel free to get in touch with FIRST Security.