Workplace Violence
Background
Openreach look after the fibres, wires and cables that connect the entire country. Openreach’s Safety Director asked us to look at the subject of workplace violence.
Objectives
Openreach engineers spend a lot of time in customers’ homes and the threat of violence is a real one which has increased significantly under lockdown. With more people stuck at home and broadband becoming even more important, tempers can easily flare when things go wrong. In addition, the conspiracy theories linking COVID-19 to 5G has also placed engineers even more in the firing line for public hostility.
We needed to challenge this head on.
Strategy
There was an existing e-learn on the topic, but it was dry, drab and unimpressive. We were keen to demonstrate the power of film in learning and deliver effective, memorable learning on an important topic.
WARNING: Films contain strong language
There are three key elements to the course:
- Realistic scenarios to catch learners’ attention and to model good and bad behaviours
- Solid learning content, delivered in a way that’s easy to digest. Some people are able to defuse difficult situations with ease. It’s a skill, and one that can be taught.
- In a situation of physical threat, higher thinking goes out of the window; we needed to deliver practical advice and take outs, which would stick and be easily recalled.
Results
The training has just started to go live and incidents of workplace violence are uncommon enough that it’s too soon to see impact on the ground. But here’s some initial feedback:
“What a great course that was. Production is brilliant as it’s actually real life situations instead of the CBTs we usually do with animated bits and someone talking over pictures. Engineers will definitely benefit from this, they will see how their behaviour could lead to aggressive confrontations. I think everyone should go through this.”
“I found it very interesting because until you are in the situation you don’t really think about how you would respond and seeing the videos, especially the second situation in the house. I liked how it the showed the good and bad ways of dealing with aggression and I consider it very useful. The clips that were shown were good I liked the realism as an angry customer wouldn’t hold back regarding the language and level of aggression.”