Cost of violence at work - the risks

Those at risk

In a survey of over 5000 safety representatives the TUC has identified workplace violence to be the fastest growing health and safety concern and ranked as one of the top five workplace hazards.

The number of incidents of violence at work rose 45% in 2005. This follows an all-time low in 2003/04 British Crime Survey interviews.  The Home Office's British Crime Survey (BCS) showed there was an estimated 655,000 cases of assault or threats in the workplace in 2004-05, up 204,000 on the previous year. However, levels were still down on the peak of 1.3 million incidents in 1995.

Most at risk of assaults are security and protective services staff - at 11.4%. Next come nurses at 5%.

SAFERcare

Healthcare: The NHS Staff survey 2003 shows that 8% of primary care trust nurses were violently attacked by a patient, 2% by a relative and 1% by a colleague. Acute hospital faired worse - 12% attacked by patients, 5% by relatives and 1% by colleagues. For mental health trusts the figures were 24%, 3% and 1% respectively. Ambulance workers had the most worrying statistics at 31%, 19% and 1% respectively.

The survey also showed that only 60% of violent incidents were reported. The exception was mental health trusts where the reporting level was about 85%.

Childrens services: A survey produced by the Teacher Support Network in 2007 found that nearly half of teachers have been physically abused by pupils and more than 90 percent have been verbally abused. Similarly the Association of Teachers and Lecturers found that just over one in three teachers had been subject to physical aggression.

SAFERwork

The British Crime Survey shows most at risk of threats are public transport workers at 5.6%, followed by security and protective staff at 5.3%, other health professionals at 4% and retail staff at 3.5%.

The British Retail Consortium's Survey of 2002 showed that an incident of physical violence occurred at 36 out of every 100 retail outlets. Threats of violence occurred at 86 per 100.

In 2006/07 recorded assaults on rail staff increased by 8% to 3,026 offences. BTP has been encouraging reporting of these offences. Over half, 51% of staff assaults offences were detected in 2006/07.

When these employees face conflict in a work situation it can lead to physical and/or psychiatric injury, high stress levels, reduced performance, poor service delivery, absenteeism, staff replacement costs, compensation payments, higher insurance contributions.

The cost

The cost impacts on businesses and society on several levels:

• Individual employees may suffer loss of confidence, stress or physical harm. Employees may have to have time off work to recover emotionally or physically from an assault. This can be a heavy cost on the organisation. 
• Recruitment costs become a consideration when work-related dangers and conflict result in high turnover of staff. It is no accident that the high-risk jobs of security, retail and social care often have high staff turnover of over 20%.
• Claims by employees are on the increase. In a recent case a firm was fined £179,000 for failing to honour its "duty of care" . This duty includes providing a safe place of work, and requires employers to assess and prevent violence and other risks to employees. (Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999)
• Success of an organisation or business is partly or wholly dependent on customer satisfaction. Taking measures to reduce conflict will enhance customer service delivery - and so improve the bottom line.
• The Health and Safety Executive reports 1.3 million attacks on lone workers in the UK every year. Over 40% of these are physical.
• The National Audit Office puts a "conservative estimate" on the cost to the NHS of workplace violence at £173m. (This excludes an allowance for low productivity and staff turnover.) There are solutions that can vastly reduce these costs to industry and the public sector.
• The Association of Teachers and Lecturers staff survey found that more than one in two teachers had considered leaving the profession because of pupil indiscipline. 
• In 2006 the number of workers seeking medical advice for what they believed to be work-related stress increased by 110,000 to an estimated 530,000. (HSC)
• nearly 14 million working days lost due to stress in 2006.

Risk assessment

Risk assessment may be at the heart of every health and safety officer's life, but how many fully understand it in the context of workplace violence?
The truth is that many struggle as they discover conventional risk assessment tools do not easily adapt to the violence context. The workplace violence risk assessment cannot be just bolted on to others such as slippage, and fire. The approach needed on violence is more complex and dynamic because it is influenced by so many factors and involves the unpredictable nature of people.

Maybo encourages employers to consider three levels of violence risk assessment:
-        A full generic violence risk assessment covering roles and tasks performed
-        Risk assessment of pre-planned events
-        Individual dynamic risk assessment

Remember the best ideas for prevention often come from staff and service users dealing with the problems day to day. The risk assessment also needs to acknowledge staff perceptions and fears - not just the tangible facts. Fox adds: "It is also easy to underestimate the impact on staff of continuous low-level verbal abuse and intimidation. This can lead to stress-related illness and affect for example, staff working in reception areas or call centres, who may not at first appear to be at risk.