Battling on the frontline

Morning peak-hour traffic had just begun to subside late last year when Brisbane bus driver Manmeet Alisher stopped to pick up passengers. Minutes later, he was engulfed in flames after a man boarding the bus threw an incendiary device at him. As terrified passengers fled out the back door, Alisher, who’d only been on the job a few months, burned to death behind the wheel.

Events like this are a shocking reminder of the risks many people face on the job. In the six months leading up to Alisher’s death, for example, 350 bus drivers across Queensland were assaulted. Sadly, they weren’t alone. Safe Work Australia (SWA) figures show that each year, there are around 4480 workers compensation claims arising from workplace assaults and 1325 claims from mental stress resulting from exposure to workplace or occupational violence.

Certain industries are particularly prone to client-initiated violence, SWA notes, with the greatest number of claims filed by prison officers, education aides, nurses, carers, security officers and guards, and police. Work-related violence also commonly occurs when perpetrators seek cash or other valuables. “This predominantly occurs in the retail, security, finance and cash handling, transport, and logistics and hospitality industries,” an SWA spokeswoman said.

But serious violence can erupt in any workplace. Ten years ago, a Queensland real estate office became a shrine of condolence cards and wreaths after property manager Rachael Myring was shot dead by a tenant who was enraged after his bank account was mistakenly debited twice for rent. In 2014, Lindt Café Manager Tori Johnson and customer Katrina Dawson died during the Sydney siege. A year later, finance worker Curtis Cheng was gunned down outside the New South Wales Police Force headquarters in Parramatta.

So how safe are any of us at our cubicles, desks or shopfronts? According to Duncan Chappell, an Honorary Professor within the University of Sydney’s Law School, workplace violence in Australia rarely results in fatalities. This is a different picture to in the United States, where violence is the second-leading cause of death at work, after road fatalities. Reduced access to firearms means Australian workers are justifiably less fearful of co-workers “going postal” — a term coined in 1986 when mail carrier Patrick Sherrill shot 14 fellow workers dead before turning the gun on himself, inciting a wave of copycats.

The flip side of this is that Australians are perhaps less prepared when someone does storm into a workplace armed with a gun and a grudge. While such events reliably hit the headlines, Chappell points out that workplace violence isn’t always so overt. “Physical attacks attract more attention, but the prevalence of psychological violence in the form of bullying and harassment is much higher,” he explains.

According to Comcare, workplace bullying places both targets and witnesses at risk. Its effects may include stress, anxiety, sleep disturbance, mental health issues including depression, reduced quality of family and home life, increased absenteeism and reduced work performance. In extreme cases, workplace bullying can even be fatal. For example, in 2011, the Victorian Parliament passed the Crimes Amendment (Bullying) Act 2011, referred to as “Brodie’s Law”, after the case of Brodie Panlock, who committed suicide in 2006 after being severely bullied.

Safe Work Australia notes that employers must take all reasonable steps to identify risks of work-related violence, and implement effective control measures. Instances of workplace violence are notifiable incidents which must be reported to the relevant state or territory WHS regulator. However, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to risk management, says Chappell. The nature and location of the workplace, client types, and staff profiles and skills all play a part.

For example, it’s hard to imagine workplace bathrooms and mirrors causing risk. Yet WorkCover NSW prosecuted the Central Sydney Area Health Service in 2002 following an event five years earlier in which nurses at a psychiatric hospital were attacked by a patient wielding shards of a broken mirror. A central element of the case was that the ward in which the assault took place had a window, a mirror and a picture frame, all containing breakable glass, in contravention of the hospital’s own policy. The investigation found the location and existence of the glass constituted a failure by the service to ensure its employees were not exposed to risk.

Employers are advised to apply the hierarchy of risk control when managing workplace violence. However, SWA suggests that it’s not always possible to apply a Level 1 (elimination) control. For example, in emergency departments, it would be difficult to exclude all aggressive, intoxicated, mentally ill patients. Thus, risk management shifts to using Level 2 (substitution and isolation) controls, which might include designing admissions areas to include barriers or moving agitated clients to secure locations with dimmed lighting.

Level 3 (exposure reduction) controls may include duress buttons or effective emergency response procedures. Speaking as part of SWA’s virtual seminar series, Tiffany Plummer, of St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, explains that the Code Grey team helps manage aggressive patients in consultation with police. “If we’re dealing with (unsafe) behaviour, it may mean that we give a chemical restraint of some sort which decreases the risk of harm to them,” she says. “(Then) they’re moved into the main department where they’re really closely monitored, normally one to one.”

Organisations that fail to get it right face reputational, legal and financial risks. The onus thus falls squarely on employers to ensure they’re taking all “reasonably practicable” steps to ensure employees’ health and safety. “You can’t neutralise all risk by building a fortress and controlling every action of every employee,” says Chappell. “You can only do the best you can.”

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Sergey Nivens