New data from Crime Survey for England and Wales announced
Stats show violence towards staff is increasing
This week, the Office for National Statistics released new statistics on violence in the workplace. Taken from the annual ‘Crime Survey for England and Wales’ (CSEW), which reported figures for the year ended March 2018 – the resulting report highlights an increase in violence being directed towards staff. Seemingly, despite a lot of cross-industry effort to tackle the problem, the verbal abuse of our workforce continues to rise.
The Crime Survey is a broad survey involving up to 50,000 households and has been used by the government as a barometer for crime since the early 1980s. The survey is designed to assess victimisition by asking members of the public about their experiences of crime, and used in combination with recorded crime data from the police.
It is also used to understand new and emerging crimes, as well as better understanding where under-reporting or recording of crime is an issue.
Violence in the workplace, specifically:
CSEW indicated 694,000 incidents of violence at work for adults of working age, in employment between 2017/2018. This is an increase of over 50,000 instances on the previous year and includes both ‘Assaults’ (330,000 instances) and ‘Threats’ (364,000 instances).
The survey also suggests that assaults result in an injury to a worker, 41% of the time – with minor injuries most prevalent. Most workplace violence is perpetrated by an individual not known to the victim – with 54% of offenders being classified as strangers.
To download violence at work statistics visit HSE.
Sources:
