Prevent work-related violence in your medium or large business

Overview

How this helps your business

Being exposed to aggressive or violent incidents, especially if it happens repeatedly, can have serious, ongoing effects on employees' physical and mental health and wellbeing.

When you understand the risk factors, you can find ways to reduce the risk of violence and aggression.

Developing an aggression and violence prevention policy makes it clear how you expect your employees, customers and clients to behave, helps you work with your employees on solutions and shows you are committed to your employees' health and safety.

Step 1

Learn more on this topic

No one should ever feel that violence and aggression is 'part of the job'.

Most of us understand that extreme acts of violence are unacceptable. But not everyone realises there is a scale of violence and aggression. Violence and aggression includes:

• aggressive gestures or expressions such as eye rolling and sneering
• verbal abuse such as yelling, swearing and name calling
• intimidating physical behaviour such as standing in someone's personal space or standing over them
• physical assault such as biting, spitting, scratching, pushing, shoving, tripping and grabbing
• extreme acts of violence and aggression such as hitting, punching, strangulation, kicking, personal threats, threats with weapons, sexual assault

These videos were made to highlight aggression and violence in the health industry but the message that everyone has a right to feel safe at work is true for all workplaces.

This guidance provides information about your duties to identify, assess, and control hazards and risks associated with work-related violence. It also provides information on preventing and responding to work-related violence.

Step 2

Consult your staff

A safe workplace is more easily achieved when employers and employees talk to each other about any problems that come up and work together to fix them.

Starting conversations about what aggression and violence looks like in your workplace, and what could be done to better prevent and manage it, is the first step in creating an aggression-free workplace. For example, calling out poor behaviour and setting boundaries about how people work together respectfully, including customers and suppliers.

Having these discussions in a non-judgemental way helps you build trust within your team.

Consultation with your employees

There are many ways you can talk with your employees about aggression and violence including:

• one-on-one discussions with your leaders and employees
• when you casually walk around your workplace with your staff
• through your health and safety representatives
• through your health and safety committees
• having OHS as an agenda item at your regular meetings and use this time to talk about aggression and violence. These may be 'toolbox talks', production meetings, staff meetings or any way people in your organisation communicate with each other.

Step 3

Write or review your policy

A workplace aggression and violence prevention policy sets out how everyone is expected to act in your workplace and how aggression and violence will be prevented. It can be drafted in a positive way, outlining how everyone should be treated at work, how risk of aggression and violence will be managed, and how employees should respond if there is an incident as well as outlining what people shouldn’t do.

Your employees must be able to have their say in what the policy will be. It could be a stand-alone workplace aggression and violence prevention policy, or you can include information on aggression and violence as part of your general occupational health and safety policy. What's important is that everyone knows where to find it.

Your policy needs to be relevant for your workplace. This template and sample will give you some ideas where to get started, but remember to customise it to suit your workplace.

Use this list to see what else you might need to consider. Ask some of your employees to read your draft policy and give you feedback.

Will your employees know how to prevent and respond to aggression and violence now?

Prevention of aggression and violence policy checklist:

• What sort of behaviour counts as aggression and violence.
• Employees will be supported if they are exposed to aggression or violence.
• Aggression and violence is not tolerated.
• What management and employees should do if aggression or violence happens.
• Why it's important to report incidents.
• Who to report incidents to.
• Outline of the responsibilities of different people, e.g. senior managers, employees, security.
• The process for identifying safety issues, deciding how serious they are, and attempting to reduce them
• Where you got information from. (A good source is WorkSafe's A guide for employers – Preventing and responding to work-related violence)
• Who has approved or endorsed the policy.
• When the policy will be reviewed.

Step 4

Share with staff

Use your meetings or 'toolbox talks' to discuss your prevention of aggression and violence policy and procedures, and encourage your employees to ask any questions. Share the documents widely so that all employees have access to them: you could display them on your notice boards or share them via email.

Set a policy review date and put a reminder in your team calendar.