For Carol Hosea and her team at Grantsmill caravan park, the key to dealing with violence and aggression at work was all about holding people to account.

At the suggestion of a Healthy Working Lives advisor, Carol introduced a behaviour register. Once people knew their actions were being recorded and reported things improved dramatically.

Simple things make a huge difference
Carol explained how people’s behaviour changed with the introduction of the register.

“ As soon as anyone starts being aggressive we get the book out and say, 'I’m very sorry but you are being aggressive and we are going to have to put your name in this book. If you continue we will report you, there is a body that we can report you to and they will take it from there.' It just stops them in their tracks.”

Putting up posters
Customers at the caravan park know that Carol is committed to protecting her team. Healthy Working Lives provided posters that were put up around the caravan park with the message that staff are protected and violence or aggression would not be tolerated.

Keeping calm
As well as using the register Carol’s staff have also become experts in calming down potentially violent situations.

Carol explains, “We teach our staff how to keep calm and how to calm down customers who are behaving aggressively.

“We use the behaviour register or as a last resort the threat of having them removed from the park to stop things getting out of control.”

Protecting visitors
It’s not just her team that Carol wants to keep safe. There are a lot of children on the caravan park who need to be protected from potentially volatile situations.

A one-way system was introduced to make sure customers could enter and exit the park without getting in each others way, as this had in the past been the casue of some aggression amongst customers. Now everyone uses the system and a cause of irritation is removed. Carol is also in the process of installing CCTV cameras to help minimise crime and keep visitors safe.