Zero Tolerance Policy

The Company takes it very seriously if a member of staff is treated in an abusive or violent way

Introduction

We treat all abuse reports concerning WizeIP™ seriously and are dedicated to investigating all violations submitted to us. If you come across content on WizeIP™ that you think violates our Terms of Service, please report a violation. After you submit a report, we'll investigate it and take the appropriate action. We'll get back to you only if we require additional details or have more information to share. We may close your report without a response, if we believe that the reported instance does not amount to a violation.

To successfully provide products and services a mutual respect between all the staff and customers has to be in place. Our staff aim to be polite, helpful, and sensitive to all customers’ individual needs and circumstances. They would respectfully remind customers that very often staff could be confronted with a multitude of varying and sometimes difficult tasks and situations, all at the same time. The staff understand that customers do not always act in a reasonable manner and will take this into consideration when trying to deal with a misunderstanding or complaint.

WizeIP™ recognizes how important it is for WizeIP™ Activity Cloud Hub® to be a place where people and entrepreneurs feel free and empowered to communicate, work, automate and market their business, and we take our role seriously in keeping abuse off the service. We’re committed to making WizeIP™ a safe place. We remove content that could contribute to a risk of harm to the physical security of persons. Content that threatens or abuses people has the potential to intimidate, exclude, silence others, or unfairly compete isn’t allowed on WizeIP™.

However, aggressive behaviour, be it violent or abusive, will not be tolerated and may result in you being service refused and, in extreme cases, the Police being contacted.

Policy Statement

This policy shows how WizeIP™ exercises its duty to care to keep its staff safe from the abusive behaviour and risks of being harmed by service users and “third parties” in the course of their work. “Third parties” include relatives and friends of service users, visiting professionals, suppliers, tradespeople, contractors, and others our staff may contact with. There are separate policies and procedures for addressing abuse to and from colleagues in the workplace, which is usually treated as misconduct and addressed through the service’s disciplinary procedures.

Related policies include:

• Bullying
• Challenging Behaviour, Violence and Aggression
• Harassment
• Dignity at Work
• Racial Harassment
• Lone Working in Care
• Equality, Diversion and Inclusion
• Visiting and Visitors

The WizeIP™’s default position is that its staff should always be treated courteously and with respect for the work they are doing. They should not be subject to abusive behaviour in any form, which includes:

• sexually inappropriate comments and behaviour
• using bad language or swearing at our staff
• rude, disrespectful and offensive behaviour, including derogatory remarks and disruptive acts amounting to verbal and emotional abuse,
• racist and discriminatory abuse
• threats of physical violence
• aggressive and violent behaviour
• persistent or unrealistic demands that cause stress to staff will not be accepted. Requests will be met wherever possible and explanations given when they cannot
• causing damage/stealing from the WizeIP™’s premises, staff or visitors

WizeIP™ considers that staff should be safe at work and should not be exposed to undue or unreasonable risk. We believe that staff must work safely, free from the threat of injury or distress from the abusive behaviour of others. It will not tolerate abuse in any shape or form and will investigate all reported or observed incidents of staff being subject to disrespectful behaviour or abuse.

Physical attacks on staff at work are, fortunately, very rare and the service does all it can to minimise this risk to ensure that staff are as safe as possible. Verbal abuse is more common and can cause considerable emotional distress. The service recognises that its staff could be subject to some form of abuse at any time and recognises its duty to ensure that staff are properly trained and supported to deal with any incident

Types of Abuse

We have sorted various kinds of abuse into the following categories:

1. Spam, Malware and Phishing — Users are prohibited from using WizeIP™ Services for the transmission of "junk mail", "spam", "chain letters", “phishing” or unsolicited mass distribution of email or other kinds of similar information. An example of a phishing attempt is an email requesting you to reveal your credit card number to be eligible for a prize amount.
2. Promotes Hatred, Violence or Illegal/Offensive Activities — Transmission or publishing any content that (a) is unlawful, illegal, hateful, promotes racism or promotes discrimination or hatred based on ethnicity, and (b) defames, abuses, harasses, stalks, threatens or otherwise violates privacy and other legal rights of others, are explicitly considered as prohibited activities by WizeIP™.
3. Sexually Explicit Material — Sexually explicit materials are those materials that contain adult or mature content. We do not authorize users to publish or transmit sexually explicit material using WizeIP™ Services.
4. Child Exploitation — We have a zero tolerance policy towards content that exploits children. This means we will terminate the accounts of any user that we find sharing or publishing child abuse content. We will also report the content and its owner to law enforcement authorities.
5. Personal and Confidential Information — We do not allow use of WizeIP™ services to publish personal and confidential information of persons that is not publicly accessible without their explicit consent. Examples of personal and confidential information are full name, phone number, address, social security number, credit card number, government issued identification card details and bank information.
6. Copyright infringement — Copyright infringement occurs when someone other than the copyright holder copies the “expression” of a work. If you discover that there has been copyright infringement by a WizeIP™ user involving your work we will take necessary action as specified here.
7. Other Violations — If you believe that you have a violation to report, that does not fall within any of the categories mentioned above, you may choose this to report such violation. Please note that you will be required to provide a description of such violation for us to take an appropriate action.

The Legal Position

As a responsible employer, the WizeIP™ has a duty as a service provider to protect the health, safety and welfare of staff under the Health & Safety at Work Act. This includes a risk assessment of violence towards staff and taking steps to mitigate this under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.

Staff members who are victims of violent conduct or assault have the right to sue their employers for compensation if the risk of violence could have been reduced or removed completely, but the employers did not act upon this information.

Examples of security issues:

• Security of grounds and car parking
• Security of premises – incl. storage, “out of hours”
• CCTV
• Cash and staff – storing, handling and transferring
• Security Systems
• Security of equipment – medical devices, computers
• Communication of national security alerts
• Information records
• Contingency planning.
• Security of employees
• Staff working on their own (Staff can be lone workers when making domiciliary visits or within a hospital department e.g. out of hours)

This list is not exhaustive.

For example a lone working risk assessment must provide the lone worker full knowledge of the hazards and risks to which he or she is being exposed and what they must need to do will something go wrong. Other responsible persons must know the whereabouts of lone workers and what they are doing;

Violence at Work

This information will be recorded in the customer’s account and flagged to ensure that members of staff are aware. In addition, where deemed necessary, appropriate support will be put in place, e.g. staff members do not see the customer alone.

Definition of Physical and Verbal Abuse and Violence:

Physical and verbal abuse includes:

• Unreasonable and / or offensive remarks or behaviour / rude gestures / innuendoes
• Sexual and racial harassment
• Threatening behaviour (with or without a weapon)
• Actual physical assault (whether or not it results in actual injury) includes being pushed or shoved as well as being hit, punched or attacked with or without any kind of weapon.
• Attacks on partners, members of staff or the public
• Discrimination of any kind
• Damage to an employee’s or employer’s property

The HSEO (Health and Safety Executive Officer) defines work-related violence as:

“Any incident, in which a person is abused, threatened or assaulted in circumstances relating to their work”.

Violence and aggression towards a person may also be defined as:

“A physical contact with another person which may or may not result in pain or injury. The contact is uninvited and is an attempt to cause harm, injury or to intimidate. Non-physical aggression includes the use of language which causes offence or threatens the safety of a member of staff”.

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, the Company will also undertake the following measures to ensure a safe work environment:

• Carry out risk assessments to assess and review the duties of employees, identifying any “at risk” situations and taking appropriate steps to reduce or remove the risk to employees, particularly if they are working alone.
• Assess and review the layout of the premises to reduce the risk to employees where physically possible.
• Assess and review the provision of personal safety equipment, such as alarms.
• Develop procedures and guidelines for dealing with physical and verbal abuse.
• Provide support and counselling for victims, or refer to suitably qualified health professionals.
• Make employees aware of risks and ensure employee involvement in suitable training courses.
• Record any incidents on a Significant Event form and take any remedial action to ensure similar incidents are prevented in future.

Unreasonable demands

A demand becomes unacceptable when it starts to, or when complying with the demand would, impact excessively on the work of our staff. Or when dealing with the matter takes up an excessive amount of staff time and in so doing, disadvantages other members of the public.

For example:

1. Repeatedly demanding responses within an unreasonable timescale
2. Demanding responses from several members of staff on the same subject;
3. Insisting on seeing or speaking to a particular member of staff when that is not possible;
4. Repeatedly changing the substance of an enquiry or complaint or raising unrelated concerns;
5. Repeatedly posing a question time and again, when a response has already been given, because the individual may not like the answer they have received.

Unreasonable levels of contact

Sometimes the volume and duration of contact made to our staff by an individual causes problems.

This can occur over a short period, for example, when a large number of calls or emails are received from the same person in one day.

1. When we are dealing with a complaint or enquiry, this may occur when a person repeatedly makes long telephone calls to us or;
2. Inundates us with emails or;
3. Copies of information that have been already sent or that are irrelevant to the substance of the complaint or enquiry.

We consider that the level of contact has become unacceptable when the amount of time spent talking to an individual on the telephone, or responding to, reviewing and filing emails or written correspondence, impacts on our ability to deal with the matter, or on our responsibility for carrying out tasks relating to other constituents.

How we manage abusive or aggressive behaviour

Any member of staff who directly experiences aggressive or abusive behaviour from a constituent or member of the public, has the authority to deal immediately with that behaviour in a manner they consider appropriate to the situation and which is in line with this policy.

Staff will end telephone calls if they consider the caller aggressive, abusive or offensive. Our staff have the right to make this decision, to tell the caller that their behaviour is unacceptable and to end the call if the behaviour then persists.

If behaviour persists in future correspondence, we will tell the person in writing that we will not permit any further contact from them.

How we deal with other categories of unreasonable behaviour

Where a member of the public repeatedly phones, visits our offices, raises the same issue repeatedly, or sends us large numbers of documents about which the relevance is not clear, we may decide to:

• Limit contact to telephone calls from the person at set times on set days;
• Restrict contact to a nominated member of staff who will deal with future calls or correspondence;
• See the person by appointment only;
• Restrict contact to written correspondence only;
• Refuse to deal with further correspondence and return any documents or, in extreme cases;
• Advise the person that further irrelevant documentation will be destroyed;
• Take any other action that we consider appropriate to the circumstances.

Where we consider continued correspondence on a wide range of issues to be excessive, we may tell the person that only a certain number of issues will be considered in a given period and ask them to limit or focus their requests accordingly.

Where someone repeatedly demands a response on an issue on which they have already been given a clear answer, we may refuse to respond to further enquiries from the person.

We will always tell the person in writing the action we are taking and the reasons why.