Kawerau District Council has launched a ‘be kind’ campaign to staff.
The Council’s Health and Safety committee agreed that the culture towards staff needed to be highlighted following a few incidences in recent years.
“They are isolated incidences, but they can affect our frontline staff,” Kawerau District Council manager communications and engagement Tania Humberstone said. 
There are usually a number of reasons for customers getting upset and sometimes staff can diffuse an issue before it gets out of hand. Other times, it may be as simple as a staff member advising a caller that we do not accept abuse over phone.
Occasionally, the Police are called upon to assist, but usually staff are able to ask the person to leave the premises and they do so. 
As part of this awareness, and the fact that everyone has different stresses and tipping points, Council takes a proactive approach to ensuring staff have the right tools to deal with the potential confrontation. 
Council organises a variety of training sessions for staff including mental health, bullying and harassment and customer conflict sessions. 
Last year, a larger city council compiled a video using some of the language that customers had said to staff – which was quite confronting. 
Thankfully, as we are a small council, most of our customer interactions are positive and pose no issues at all. We even have customers who are kind enough to bring in baking and treats during the Christmas period and this is the type of community-minded spirit, which we all love about Kawerau.
“But we can’t ignore the fact that there are other customers who forget that our customer services team are people. They are someone’s mum or dad, sister or brother, daughter, son, aunty or uncle. 
“We hope that by reminding customers that our people are just like them and just trying to do the best they can – it will make a difference.” 

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