SHP Lone Workers series, sponsored by People Safe
Director of the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, Rachel Griffin, talks about some of the skills needed by lone workers in order to improve their safety if they have to deal with aggression at work.
No matter how good an organisation’s personal safety policies and procedures are and how much the risks have been reduced, it is still possible that a member of the public could become aggressive or even violent to an employee. Therefore it is vital that staff that may be at risk have the knowledge and skills to enable them defuse or contain a difficult situation until help can get to them, if the need should arise.
Violence rarely comes out of the blue. There are normally warning signals – such as sweating, pacing, table tapping or rapid speech and movements — and it is important for our safety be able to recognise these. It is equally valuable to be able to make an appropriate assessment of the situation and to ensure that we can manage our own behaviour and communication.
Self awareness plays a vital part in a person’s ability to deal with aggressive situations. We all need to be aware of, and control, any feelings in ourselves – such as anger or tension – that may trigger or escalate the behaviour of others. We need to learn how to act appropriately when dealing with an aggressive situation, rather than reacting in a manner that could escalate it.
Non-verbal communication is extremely influential. Only a small percentage of a message is conveyed with words, whereas the messages conveyed by body language and tone of voice are far stronger. We can tell someone we understand and sympathise with them, but if we are bored, desperate to go home or have any negative thoughts about them, this information can leak out in our body language or voice.
This will be picked up by the other person and will override anything we are saying. Therefore our body language and tone of voice needs to be congruent with our verbal message.
People become aggressive for a number of reasons, including when they feel they are not being listened to or taken seriously enough. Therefore an important skill to have when dealing with people is ‘active listening’.
This is about not only listening carefully but also showing that we are listening and understanding what is being said – by nodding, taking notes, asking for points to be clarified and so on. Listening well is not a natural skill. Most people are so intent on interrupting and saying their piece that they miss half of what is being said to them. Good listening is a basic conflict resolution skill which anyone who interacts with the public needs to master.
Dealing with upset and potentially aggressive or violent individuals is a skill that can be learnt and once learnt it can make working life a lot easier and safer.
The above outlines just some of the skills that can be learnt and used to help defuse an aggressive client or member of the public. For more information on workplace safety training for frontline staff, visit www.suzylamplugh.org/training or call 020 7091 0014.
For more on lone working, download our white paper: Managing lone workers within your organisation: Risk assessment, policy and training, provided by People Safe.
Suzy Lamplugh Trust was established in 1986 following the disappearance of young estate agent, Suzy Lamplugh, to highlight the personal safety risks people can face during their working day and to offer advice, action and support to minimise those risks. They work throughout the UK to provide a range of personal safety services including workplace training and consultancy, community projects and public awareness and policy campaigns.
Strangely, I have experienced a few instances of staff using anti-aggression H & S training in an aggressive manner to rebuff reasonable customer complaint. Sample reference to lost baggage in the very early hours at Gatwick airport, one person serving the desks of North & South terminals and a wait of one hour to report the loss to the person who was unpleasant and verbally aggressive, not wanting to receive complaint (which was not aggressive) citing his training as the reason. Train staff properly.
I am amazed at how many organisations (including publicly funded bodies) do not provide this training for their staff. Our company provides this training but how do we persuade more people to take this seriously?! Please do contact me if you would like to pursue this further…
Problem with training those lacking the “emotional literacy” to understand that just talking softly and in a patronising way is guaranteed to trigger zero tolerance in the subject who will be even more likely to flip-out and bater the idiot who is clearly not employing their listening skills at all, at all.