Aggressive and intimidating behaviour towards Western Bay council employees has been identified as a key risk factor for ACC claims. Stock image, photo posed by models. Photo / 123rf
Aggressive and intimidating behaviour towards Western Bay council employees has been identified as a key risk factor for ACC claims. Stock image, photo posed by models. Photo / 123rf
Aggressive and intimidating behaviour towards Western Bay council employees has been identified as a key risk factor for ACC claims.
Data obtained by the Bay of Plenty Times under the Official Information Act showed Tauranga City Council, Western Bay of Plenty District Council and Bay of Plenty Regional Council received $95,257 in payments from ACC between January 01 to December 31, 2022.
The payments were for a total of 114 claims, most of which involved soft-tissue injuries such as sprains and strains.
Slipping, tripping or falling at work were the main reasons behind the payments for most councils.
At Western Bay council, health, safety and wellbeing lead Clint Boyle said its animal services officers had experienced the most injuries across the council team.
“One of the biggest risks we’ve experienced recently is aggressive or intimidating behaviour from members of the public to our public-facing team members,” Boyle said.
“With the current state of the world and people having to deal with more pressure at home, we see this as continuing to be one of the main risks to our team.”
While such behaviour could result in physical injury, it could also impact a person’s mental well-being and ability to do their job.
Western Bay of Plenty District Council's Clint Boyle. Photo / Alex Cairns
Boyle said the council had run de-escalation training, workplace design reviews, and focused on empowering its team to report these kinds of events to help its team cope.
“We have more work to do in this space, and with the direct input from our affected team members this will form a key part of our Health Safety and Wellbeing strategy into the future,” he said.
At a Western Bay council Audit, Risk and Finance Committee meeting on February 27, Boyle told councillors and the mayor there had been an increase in events in which council staff reported being involved in “threatening or aggressive behaviour with members of the public”.
Over a six-month period, there were 11 verbally aggressive encounters, including five threatening behaviour interactions.
“In all accounts, council staff have acted appropriately and have been able to calm the situation while exercising caution.”
In that meeting, council chief executive John Holyoake said the matter was “concerning” and referenced issues at Te Puke Library in particular.
“I think in local government, we’ve normalised bad behaviour and I think through that we have underestimated the impact it has on staff.
“There’s a lot of really bad behaviour that goes on toward our staff and we accept that as normal, and I think we actually need to step back a little bit and ask ourselves whether this is okay.
“It’s in the emails our staff get, phone calls our staff get ... we get some pretty gnarly conversations going on.”
Holyoake said he believed the poor behaviour probably was a “reflection of the stress the world is under, and some people see different parts of society as a target for unloading”.
“We do need to get to a point where we say this is not okay, we need to reset some expectations.”
Council head of people and capability Darren Crowe said this was an increasing trend that needed to be monitored, especially in light of recent inflation and natural disasters.
He said it was a credit to staff involved in aggressive or threatening incidents that they handled them well.
“These events do have an ongoing physiological impact on our team members so we need to keep an eye on that.”
Western Bay of Plenty District Council's Clint Boyle, who has said the reported increase of aggressive behaviour by members of the public has become a key risk factor for staff's health and wellbeing. Photo / Alex Cairns
Public Service Association (PSA) represents and supports more than 80,000 workers across the public service.
National sector leader Ian Gordon previously said in relation to assaults and abuse of council staff that they often became the face of the council and received people’s responses - good and bad - to it.
“They are frontline. Sometimes people don’t see it quite that way. They react to the person they see rather than realise they are enforcing the rules. They are not the ones making the decisions around that.”
Since the Covid-19 outbreak, people had been “a bit more stressed around the potential Covid situation”, Gordon said.
By comparison, at Bay of Plenty Regional Council, risk and assurance manager Steven Slack said the area in which council employees seemed to suffer the most injuries was mostly outside jobs.
“This is primarily in ... unpredictable terrain, such as biosecurity, data services, and rivers and drainage, as they either involve walking in the bush rivers or unfamiliar environments.
“The nature of our work is that much of it can be out in the environment, therefore we tend to get soft-tissue injuries that relate to strains and sprains from working on uneven ground in all types of climatic conditions.”
ACC claims from regional council staff resulted in $36,221 in payouts.
Slack said the council investigated all injuries to determine whether any extra mitigations to better protect employees should be in place. However, no significant changes have been made in recent years, due to the nature of the injuries reported.
“Having staff off can of course impact operational activity by not having resources available, but as the incidences are relatively low given the size of the organisation, the current impact is minimal.”
Tauranga City Council, where claims led to $31,171 in payouts, was contacted for comment.
