Scottish local authorities have issued what are believed to be the UK’s first guidelines to try and help protect staff from physical and emotional violence in the workplace.

The guidelines called ‘Managing Occupational Violence and Aggression in the Workplace: Tools and Strategies’ were devised by NHS Scotland’s Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Scottish Trades Union Congress in a bid to stamp out the threat of verbal and physical abuse.
 
It is estimated that nearly one in four of the country’s citizen-facing staff have suffered verbal abuse by a member of the public over the last 12 months. The number of assaults reported against local authority personnel rose to 9,910 in 2009 from 9,121. Classroom assistants, refuse collectors, care workers and councillors are particularly vulnerable.
 
Linda Shanahan, violence prevention manager for the Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives, who led the development of the guidelines, said: “Employers have a duty to protect their staff and the Centre can provide them with support to tackle this unacceptable issue and reassure them that the reporting of incidents involving violence in the workplace need not be a complicated process.”
 
Many incidents currently go unreported due to a lack of robust reporting procedures or perceptions that abuse is simply part of the job.
 
But Shanahan said that being on the receiving end of such violence can contribute to long-term health issues such as stress and depression which, in turn, results in additional organisational costs linked to absenteeism and difficulties in retaining staff.
 
The Centre’s aim is to cut work-related ill health by 20% and days lost to ill health by 30%. In Scotland, 2.2 million working days are lost to sickness every year, which costs employers £1.2 billion or the equivalent of £1,600 per employee.
 
The guidelines are intended to raise awareness of the reasons why violence may occur and to provide tools to help practitioners, managers, individual workers and elected members manage the situation.
 
They are based on examples of best practice and include input from 15 local authorities along with a range of other experts. The guidelines are meant to provide councils with a means of comparing recommendations against existing practices and to encourage staff involvement in agreeing and monitoring procedures.
 
The guidance is available at www.healthyworkinglives.com.