HSE has Updated its Guidance on Violence at Work
Violence and aggression at work can have a serious impact on your workers' physical and mental health.
What's New?
The HSE guidance has been updated to:
- Simplify the navigation to help you easily find the information you need;
- Remove outdated content and replace it with up-to-date practical guidance; and
- Remind you that HSE’s definition of violence includes aggression, such as verbal abuse or threats – this can be face to face, online or over the phone
The guidance will help you assess the risks, put the right controls in place to protect workers and report incidents and learn from them.
Guidance for Employers
The guidance covers all areas of violence at work. It includes:
- Overview What violence in the workplace is and how to prevent it
- What the law says Health and safety laws which are relevant to violence at work
- Assessing the risks How to assess the risks of violent incidents at work
- Control measures to prevent violence Put the right controls in place to protect your workers from violence
- Reporting and learning from incidents What incidents to report and how to learn from them
- Examples of ways to prevent violence Typical examples of how other employers have reduced the risk of violence
Overview
Here, the HSE explain what work-related violence and aggression is and how employers can protect workers from it.
It is also aimed at safety representatives and people responsible for health and safety in their workplace. There is separate advice for workers.
If you're self-employed, you can check if health and safety law applies to you.
This guidance covers the law, how to assess the risks and put the right controls in place to protect workers.
It also covers what you should do if an incident does occur, what to report and how to support any workers who may be physically or mentally affected.
Advice for Workers
An employer has specific duties to protect their staff from work-related violence and aggression. This includes verbal abuse as well as physical attacks.
This also applies if staff are working for them as contractors, freelancers or are self-employed.
The guidance for employers on violence includes information on:
- Preventing incidents
- Providing you with training
- What incidents to report and record
There is also advice on how employers should support you after an incident.
You may be at greater risk if you are a lone worker due to the lack of nearby support to help if things go wrong.
New starters, trainees and other vulnerable workers are also often at greater risk.
Definition of violence at work
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) defines work-related violence as:
‘Any incident in which a person is abused, threatened or assaulted in circumstances relating to their work.’
It is important to remember that this can include:
- Verbal abuse or threats, including face to face, online and via telephone
- Physical attacks
This might include violence from members of the public, customers, clients, patients, service users and students towards a person at work.
For violence to be work-related, it must be in connection with the work activity. For example, the following situations would not be included in this definition:
- Personal disputes between workers and other people, such as family members
- Violence between people not at work, such as customers or service users
HSE is not the primary authority for cases of bullying, harassment or domestic abuse in the workplace. However, legal advice is available from other sources.