Work-related violence

The Work Health and Safety (National Uniform Legislation) Act 2011 and Regulations require persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs) to ensure workers and others are not exposed to risks to their health and safety, including from work-related violence.

You must take a systematic approach to managing risk with the aim of eliminating the risk, or is this is not possible, minimising the risk as far as is reasonably practicable. One way to do this is to follow the risk management process in consultation with workers, health and safety representatives and any other relevant duty holders. This involves:

• identifying hazards
• assessing risks, if necessary
• controlling risks
• reviewing hazards and control measures to ensure they are working as planned

Workers and others at the workplace also have a duty to take reasonable care of their own health and safety, and not adversely affect the health and safety of themselves or others. This includes following any reasonable instruction given to comply with a health and safety duty.

Hazards can be identified by consulting with workers and other duty holders and observing how work is carried out to see what could go wrong.

Work-related violence can arise from hazards that increase stress and conflict. This includes high job demands, low job control, lack of role clarity, environmental conditions and poor workplace relationships.

Additional hazards for work-related include:

• working alone, in isolation or in a remote area with the inability to call for assistance
• working offsite or in the community
• working in unpredictable environments
• communicating face-to-face with customers
• handling valuable or restricted items, for example cash, firearms or medicines
• providing care to people who are distressed, confused, afraid, ill or affected by drugs and alcohol
• service methods that cause or escalate frustration, resentment, misunderstanding or conflict; for example, setting unreasonable expectations of the services an organisation or workers can provide
• enforcement activities such as the activities of police, prison officers or parking inspectors.

It may not be necessary to assess the risks of a hazard if you already know the risks associated it, and there are well-known and accepted ways to control it. If you do need to assess risk, you must seek input from your workers and others including relevant duty holders.

In assessing the risks you should consider the following:

• who could be exposed to hazards
• when they are likely to be exposed to hazards
• frequency and duration of exposure to hazards
• the ways hazards interact to make new or greater risks
• effectiveness of current control measures
• the harm exposure could cause

Potential harm could:

• be physical or psychological
• include minor or serious injury and illness, or death
• be the result of a single incident, or build up over a longer period.

The best way to reduce the likelihood of work-related violence is to eliminate the risk of exposure to it. If that is not possible, you need to minimise the risk as far as reasonably practicable.

Prevention and management of work-related violence requires an integrated organisational approach. For example, the risk of exposure to work-related violence can be affected by:

• nature and location of work
• number and types of clients
• staffing levels and skills

This means the control measures need to be tailored to your business or undertaking, and to your workers.

Engaging your workers, and any other relevant duty holders, in developing controls will mean the measures are more likely to be effective and used.

Examples of control measures include:

• moving to an electronic payment system so that cash does not need to be held
• improving processes to reduce wait times and eliminate double handling
• ensuring promotional material and worker performance standards establish clear, achievable expectations
• designing work areas so that others cannot easily access staff, for example with security doors and high counters, or parking that is not publicly accessible
• sending workers out in pairs to isolated or remote areas with a reliable means of communication to request and obtain assistance if needed
• protecting workers’ identity, for example using name tags with only a first name
• providing supervision and support for workers, especially new and young workers
• setting, modelling and enforcing acceptable behaviour standards for workers and others.
• zero tolerance of sexual harassment

You can also develop policies and procedures for workers to follow if work-related violence occurs, including:

• de-escalating conflict
• refusing to deal with aggressive or potentially violent people
• protecting their own safety
• contacts for effective assistance in an emergency
• reporting a work-related violence incident or concern
• process for dealing with a report of violence.

You must train workers to use the equipment you provide, and apply the procedures you set up, so they know what to do in potentially violent situations.

Hazard identification should be repeated periodically to ensure the hazards are appropriately controlled, that the control measures are working as intended and have not introduced new hazards to the workplace. Hazard identification should be repeated following any violent incidents or complaints about work-related violence.