I swear a lot when I cannot achieve something with calm communication.

Employees are increasingly faced with external contacts who use both physical and verbal aggression and violence against them. When an employee is faced with verbal or physical harassment, threats or attacks, this is described as aggression and violence. This can be caused by people within the organisation (colleagues, supervisors), or by outsiders (for example, customers and third parties).

Some examples of aggression include:

• Verbal and non-verbal aggression
  A heated discussion, lack of respect, insults, cursing, shouting, intimidation, assuming a threatening stance, threatening physical violence, teasing, bullying, stalking, discrimination
• Physical aggression
  Pushing, physically obstructing, hitting, kicking, scratching, spitting, biting, headbutting, stopping a person from leaving a room, assaulting, injuring
• Aggression using dangerous objects or dangerous methods
  Threatening with a knife, a dog, tools, gun or other weapons, attempted strangulation
• Indirect aggression
  Being a witness to aggression, hearing/seeing/reading about colleagues who have become victims of violence. Passing on another person’s secrets, loud music, breaking rules (testing boundaries).

• Try to remain calm
• Try to understand why the other person is behaving aggressively
• Try to engage in conversation
• Try to remain calm and do not become aggressive yourself!

If you are threatened with physical violence, make sure that you are safe! Leave the situation.

• If a person is using physical violence, try to remain calm and do not become aggressive yourself!
• Call 112 or ask bystanders to do this for you

Vitality,

Being in a good headspace. This is important to us at Heijmans. The best way to achieve a healthy environment is to ensure that you feel well. For some, the key to vitality is a healthy body. For others it is more about the work-life balance, dealing with work pressure, continuous learning or all of this at once.

You will find information about vitality at Heijmans in the HRM guide.

Heijmans is aiming for health. Will you join us?