Rising customer aggression drives call for proactive workplace violence prevention

Customer-initiated violence is rising across multiple industries, prompting calls for proactive, system-wide strategies to protect frontline workers and particularly those who are more exposed to occupational violence and aggression. 

“Organisations in sectors such as retail, banking and those providing public services are encountering increased customer-initiated violence, with varied success in their implementation of controls,” said Rachael Taylor, Principal Consultant at Work Science.

This is consistent with the Australian Security Research Centre (ASRC)’s 2020 multi-industry survey focused on retail, banking and government services, according to Taylor, who said this found just 32 per cent rated their employer’s prevention measures as adequate, around 40 per cent were ambivalent, and the balance deemed controls insufficient.

The ASRC research also highlighted training and management shortfalls: 55 per cent of frontline staff received no early violence-management training, and 41 per cent rated post-incident support as poor or very poor. The survey also revealed that over half of respondents accept aggression as part of their role and that many workplaces rely chiefly on reactive measures such as CCTV and duress alarms. 

Furthermore, Safe Work Australia’s 2024 Workplace and Work-Related Violence and Aggression in Australia report showed that workplace violence is expanding beyond its traditional strongholds of health and retail. Transport, postal and warehousing sectors experienced double-digit percentage increases in incident rates between 2020-2023, while serious assaults on school staff have risen 76 per cent since 2011. 

Taylor, who was speaking ahead of the AIHS 2025 ACT Safety Symposium, which will be held on Thursday 16 October 2025 from 9am to 5pm at QT Canberra, said recent client experience highlights three core challenges in managing customer-initiated violence. 

First, despite maturity and recognition of psychosocial risk, she said under-reporting of occupational violence remains pervasive. “Contributing factors include lack of clarity on what is defined as occupational violence and what warrants reporting; potentially traumatic events (PTEs) or near misses minimised and not viewed as worthy of reporting; lack of support from leaders to identify and report incidents and near misses/PTEs; and frontline workers often doubting that lodging reports will lead to change,” said Taylor.

“This lack of reliable data weakens hazard identification and limits organisational learning, as repeat patterns go unrecognised.”

Second, Taylor said organisations tend to rely on reactive solutions (such as CCTV, panic/ duress alarms and Employee Assistance Programs) rather than addressing root causes through an integrated and coordinated approach. 

“With high customer volumes and work conditions intensifying exposure to aggression, there is a need for an integrated approach to occupational violence that focuses on modern and proactive preventative measures, better critical incident coordination and support, and effective recovery solutions,” she said.

“Proactive measures such as workspace redesign, security controls, workflow adjustments and targeted training continue to be under-invested, allowing underlying drivers to persist and incidents to recur.”

Finally, Taylor observed that cultural norms can normalise aggression as a routine hazard, particularly in retail and healthcare. When aggression is accepted as part of the job, she explained that responses become reactive, fragmented and focused on individual events. 

“Visible leadership is needed to demonstrate that staff are not expected to tolerate violence and aggression. Effective consultation is required to develop multi-layered strategies – spanning facility design, staffing models and procurement decisions – to provide more robust risk reduction than single-point interventions,” said Taylor.

There are also a number of important trends in occupational violence aggression, added Taylor. She said Australian organisations, for example, are turning to technology and system-level thinking to counter a clear upswing in customer-initiated violence substantiated by Australian data and expert commentary. 

Professor Gary Mortimer from the Queensland University of Technology, for example, has noted that major supermarket and big-box chains have moved in the past 18 months to fit frontline staff with body-worn cameras, duress watches and computer-aided video analytics after internal registers recorded more than 800,000 aggression incidents in 2024 (87 per cent of which involved verbal abuse). Mortimer argues these devices both deter low-level abuse and also supply admissible footage when prosecutions are warranted.

Taylor noted that multiple studies highlight how broader social pressures are contributing to escalating workplace aggression: lingering pandemic tension, cost of living pressures and a culturally entrenched “customer-is-always-right” ethos that amplifies power imbalances. 

“Those drivers are now propelling aggression beyond traditional hotspots into utilities, education and government service centres, widening the exposure of frontline workers and underscoring the need for comprehensive, system-level controls,” she said.

WHS regulators are also increasing their focus on psychosocial risk mitigation, targeted through various compliance inspection programs. Taylor noted that these inspections are aimed at reviewing systems for managing psychosocial hazards and risks, plus building awareness of legal obligations for senior executives and OHS teams.

“Our experience is that organisational responsiveness to enforcement action on customer aggression is mixed but generally positive once breaches are identified,” said Taylor, who noted that the 2022 SafeWork SA Retail Violence-Prevention Compliance Project audited 89 stores and issued 28 improvement notices; 42 per cent of those notices dealt with inadequate worker training on violence and aggression. 

While most businesses (PCBUs) rectified the problems after receiving the statutory notices, Taylor noted that the audit also revealed sizeable baseline gaps in understanding WHS duties and in documenting or training staff on relevant procedures.

“Addressing compliance action from regulators continues to be important for organisations, plus keeping aware of regulator expectations of what is deemed to be reasonably practicable in workplace settings guides businesses on the controls they need to consider within their own setting,” said Taylor.

Drawing on the mature practices of health and retail, she said WHS professionals can gain valuable insights from longitudinal data on incident types, control hierarchies and response effectiveness that these sectors have developed over decades. “Examining how frontline teams in hospitals and supermarkets analyse incident patterns and adjust prevention strategies can help other industries adapt these lessons to their own environments,” said Taylor.

Further, she said, notable under-reporting of violence and aggression suggests a need to revisit how incidents are captured and acted upon. “WHS professionals might explore ways to build trust and clarity in reporting mechanisms and ensure visible follow-up, so that data truly reflects the scale and nature of frontline risks rather than remaining hidden by perceptions that ‘nothing changes’ after a report,” said Taylor.

Case studies also indicate a shift from reactive measures – such as CCTV and duress alarms – toward more proactive prevention strategies. As such, Taylor noted that addressing upstream contributors to customer frustration, including service design, queue management and workflow practices, may reduce the frequency and severity of incidents. 

“Looking beyond organisational boundaries to include customer journey mapping, community stakeholder programs and supply-chain policies can create more holistic approaches that complement internal controls,” she said.

Finally, Taylor said systems-thinking exercises in NSW hospitals demonstrate that effective prevention often involves facility design, rostering, procurement decisions and cross-agency coordination. “This highlights that violence prevention is a collective endeavour extending well beyond frontline teams,” said Taylor.

“When WHS professionals pair sector-specific research with conversations across industries, they can turn raw data into practical ideas that make sense on the high street, hospital ward or call centre.”

Taylor will be speaking at the AIHS 2025 ACT Safety Symposium, which will be held on Thursday 16 October 2025 from 9am to 5pm (with networking from 5pm to 6pm) at QT Canberra. Taylor will be speaking on ‘Designing-out danger: Practical solutions for managing work-related violence and aggression.’ For more information visit the event website.