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Invercargill Council Staff Face Rising Aggression From Public
A southern council is asking the public to be mindful of its staff following an uptick in threatening behaviour and abuse.
Invercargill City Council’s most recent health, safety and wellbeing report identified a “key trend” of rising psychosocial incidents involving council staff.
It also showed a trend of verbal abuse and threats of violence to equipment. Councillor Lesley Soper said the issue seemed to be tracking in the wrong direction and asked if it was isolated or part of a definite pattern.
Council group manager Trudie Hurst said even if incidents were isolated, the organisation took a risk-based approach which could include changes such as assigning more people to jobs.
Escalations were shared with the executive team, some of which were related to external events and some of which were unrelated, Hurst said.
“But we have noticed, whether it's the winter season and the full moon, dear I say it, that lately people have had a shorter temper, and they have felt that they needed to share that with our staff,” Hurst said.
“We would encourage the public to be mindful of our people. They are here to serve the community, and all of the community without judgement.”
Hurst said the council invested in looking after its people to ensure they could work safely.
The report showed there were 100 events relating to health, safety and wellbeing for the two months to 31 July, which was consistent.
Of those, 62 related to an actual incident, and 21 of those were for verbal abuse.
A dog control report prepared for a meeting this week also noted a “disturbing” rise in aggression and abuse towards staff undertaking their roles.
Use of the council’s employee assistance programme had dropped slightly for the two-month period ending 31 July.
-LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air
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