Violence at work

Overall scale: primary data sources

British Crime Survey (BCS)²:

Data on the estimated number of assaults and threats from the BCS in 2005/06 and 2006/07 can be found in the full report (BCS 2005-2007 report) produced jointly by HSE and the Home Office. It was estimated from the 2006/07 BCS that there were 397,000 threats of violence to British workers during the 12 months prior to the interviews, and 288,000 physical assaults. The risk of experiencing at least one violent incident (threat or assault) was estimated at 1,700 per 100,000 workers for the year. These rates are higher than those for RIDDOR for a number of reasons: partly because BCS incidents may on average be less serious than RIDDOR reports and to a lesser extent because there is known to be under-reporting by employers to RIDDOR. Furthermore, as demonstrated in the Fit3 survey (see below), incidents may not even be reported to the employer by the victim in the first instance. Many of those experiencing violence were repeat victims, hence the number of incidents is much higher than the number of victims. The 2006/07 BCS estimated that over a fifth (22%) of all people assaulted or threatened at work were repeat victims, experiencing three or more incidents of workplace violence during the year, while a further 14% experienced two incidents during the year.

The 2005/06 BCS also asked people in work how worried they were about being threatened or physically attacked by a member of the public while they were at work. Amongst workers who had contact with members of the public, 13% said they were very or fairly worried about assaults, while 16% said they were very or fairly worried about threats. These questions were not asked in the 2006/07 BCS.

RIDDOR¹:

The number and estimated rate per 100,000 workers of fatal, major and over 3 day injuries reported through RIDDOR are shown in Table RVIOL01. In total, there were 6,160 RIDDOR reported injuries caused by violence at work during the financial year 2008/09. This corresponds to a total estimated rate of 20.3 per 100,000 workers. These reports comprise 4 fatal injuries, 928 major injuries and 5,228 non-major injuries that resulted in absence from work for at least three days. The total number of reported incidents of violence in 2008/09 was of a similar order to the previous year, as shown in the table.

Fit3 worker survey³:

The 2006 survey asked workers to report whether they had experienced work-related violence in the last three months; the nature of this violence; and what, if anything, they did in terms of reporting the incident(s).

In all, 16% of respondents reported that someone had been abusive or violent towards them while they were at work within the last three months (Table FIT3VIO1). Amongst those reporting having suffered abuse or violence, 87% report having been verbally abused while the next most frequent types of abuse or violence were grabbing/pushing and hitting/punching (Table FIT3VIO2).

33% of workers who had suffered violence or abuse said they did not officially report the incident to management, security staff or a staff representative, while 51% reported to management (Table FIT3VIO3). The most common reasons given for non-reporting of violent or abusive incidents were the victim dealing with the matter themselves (44%), feeling it was too trivial to report (29%), believing that management would not have done anything about it (14%) and concern that it would make things worse (9%) (Table FIT3VIO4).

When workers with a workplace and an employer were asked what was in place to protect them from violence or abuse, a number of mechanisms were commonly reported (Table FIT3VIO5) including a zero tolerance policy on workplace abuse, violence and bullying (41%), advice or training on how to deal with verbal abuse or violence at work (38%) and advice or training on how to deal with bullying at work (26%). However, 23% of workers reported that there were no mechanisms in place at all.