The causes and prevention of workplace violence

Violence at work, particularly from dissatisfied customers, clients, claimants or patients, causes a lot stress and in some cases injury. This is not only physical violence as people may face verbal and mental abuse, discrimination, harassment and bullying. Fortunately, physical violence is still rare, but violence of all types has risen significantly in recent years. Violence at work 

In 1999 the Home Office and the Health and Safety Executive published a comprehensive report entitled Violence at Work Findings from the British Crime Survey. This was updated with a joint report Violence at Work New Findings of The British Crime Survey 2000, which was published in July 2001. This report shows the extent of violence at work and how it has changed during the period 1991-1999 (Table 17.9). 

All assaults or threats which occurred while the victim was working and were perpetuated by members of the public. 

Physical assaults include the offences of common assault, wounding, robbery and snatch theft. Threats include both verbal threats, made to or against the victim and non-verbal intimidation. These are mainly threats to assault the victim and, in some cases, to damage property. 

Excluded from the survey are violent incidents where there was a relationship between the victim and the offender and also where the offender was a work colleague. The latter category was excluded because of the different nature of such incidents. 

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