We’re supporting Service with Respect
We are one of over 200 companies that have signed up to support the Institute of Customer Service’s (ICS) Service with Respect campaign. The campaign aims to tackle the issue of abuse against public-facing workers. Around 80% of our colleagues work on the frontline, so this is an important campaign for us to support.
Mounting abuse is affecting staff across every sector. Recent research shows that more than half of all customer-facing staff in the UK have experienced abuse since the start of the pandemic. This ranges from verbal abuse, such as shouting and abusive language, to physical assaults.
In July 2020 the campaign Service with Respect was launched by the Institute of Customer Service (ICS) and following many months of campaigning, in June 2022 they achieved one of their core aims: a change in the law to protect customer-facing workers from abuse. The law now offers greater protection to all customer-facing staff.
We have a zero-tolerance approach to hostility and abuse against colleagues at GreenSquareAccord and our unacceptable behaviour policy and procedure shows the action we will take to protect colleagues who find themselves subject to this behaviour.
Maxine Espley, our Chief Operating Officer said: “Every day, we speak to hundreds of customers and deliver important services. We know the work we do can be very rewarding but sometimes we are faced with challenging situations to deal with.
“We want to build trusting and respectful relationships with our customers so that, together, we can continually improve our services.
“Service with Respect now means that our colleagues are protected by law from abuse when delivering services to customers. We are committed to supporting the campaign.”
