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Well so much for us hoping 2012 would see a reduction in workplace violence!

So far staff and employees continue to deal with violence and aggression from the very people they are employed to serve. Across all sectors hard working employees are being hurt, sometimes seriously, as they try to meet the ever increasing expectations of customers and patients against a backdrop of budget and resource cuts.

Hugh Dougherty

The performance space at Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree arts venue is lit up and some 15 figures look as if they’re rehearsing moves for a play’s fight sequence. Some are putting their palms up in front of their faces to ward off attack. Others are pulling aggressors away from colleagues and there’s action aplenty. 

But this is not a part of the centre’s theatre programme. The clue is in the fit figure, fitting between the bodies, offering encouragement here, showing where the hands should be there. 

In the last two weeks, across the world, ordinary people working in roles providing support and help to others have been exposed to the risk of violence and aggression. On a daily basis reports come in, from every corner, of staff being attacked and injured whilst at work.

Reporting on the 2009/2010 British Crime Survey (BCS) the report shows that the risk of being a victim of violence at work in the UK is low, down by 9,000 form last year figures with victims of one or more workplace violence incidents accounting for 1.4% of all working adults. Undoubtedly critics will suggest these figures are low and that anecdotally they are much higher. This highlights a systemic under reporting across many work sectors, not wanting to ‘rock the boat’ or ‘nothing ever gets done about it’ underpinning the general malaise in reporting violence at work incidents.

As KPMG UK and Durham University steal the headlines by announcing a long term partnership, aimed at broadening access to the accountancy profession, an equally important, but less heralded, partnership begins in the licensed retail sector.
The British Institute of Inn-keeping, the BII, have worked closely with Leeds Metropolitan University to develop a package which has been designed to suit the needs of the university and of their hospitality students.