Dealing with Challenging, Aggressive and Violent Behaviour in the Workplace
Workplace aggression is a real and everyday risk to most employees. They may be sworn at, threatened or even physically attacked.
Aggressive people in the workplace pose an enormous physical and emotional risk to your people and heavy fines can be imposed on your organisation if you cannot provide evidence that you are managing this risk.
This article gives practical advice to help you find out if your workers are at risk and if they are, how to tackle it.
Who is at risk?
Any employee whose job requires them to deal with other people can be at risk from violence.
Most at risk are those who are engaged in service provision to the public, health and community workers, education, retail, hospitality and entertainment. Large sums of cash and /or valuable goods increase the risk.
How do I know if my workers are at risk?
The very first step is to conduct a risk assessment. You may think aggression or violence are not a problem at your workplace or that incidents are rare. However, your employees’ view may be very different. Always consult with your frontline staff to find out whether your employees ever feel threatened or worried.   Record all incidents over time to enable you to build up a complete picture of the issue.
Deciding what action to take
Once you have identified which employees are at risk it is time to take action.
Remember it is usually a combination of factors that give rise to workplace violence. Factors which you can influence include:
- The level of training and information provided
- the environment
- Systems and processes
You can make changes to the physical environment such as providing better lighting in waiting rooms, better systems of work and staffing. Consider physical security measures such as video cameras or duress systems and security locks on doors.
Training
Regardless of what precautions you may take, violence can still happen and it’s therefore of paramount importance that you train your employees with best practice in defusing techniques and how to strategically withdraw from a situation, should it arise.
TANDI training, provides an effective, relevant online training course with the following outcomes for trainees:
- Having a better understanding of aggressive and violent behaviour and what causes it
- Self-awareness: What are your own anger triggers and how to control them
- Spot early signs of aggression
- Preventing conflict escalation
- Rearrange negative vocabulary and body language
- Evasive self-defence
- Post incident response
- How to recover and unwind
Would you like your staff to benefit from this program?
Once enrolled, your employees can do the training anytime from any computer with internet access. Using our simple-to-use online Learning Management System, there is no need for any internal set up. Just sit back and monitor completions in real time. The system will automatically generate and store completion certificates – your proof of providing the required training and instructions on this important subject.
How to enrol your staff
Simply purchase licenses here or if you would like more information on this training program, please contact us or call on ph +61 7 40503810