Resources are now available for company’s wanting to support the forthcoming Respect Our Worforce Week, taking place March 11th-15th.
The campaign is calling on the whole supply chain to help raise awareness of the challenges facing our workforce as well as the solutions being providing to solve them.
Respect Our Workforce week, aims to empower the workforce and influence a change of attitudes towards the highways sector’s workers.
The campaign aims to:
*Keep on highlighting the issue of workforce abuse and update the industry on the success of the Stamp It Out campaign
*Provide the industry with a number of resources to enable them to support this
*Work with police forces around the country to work towards delivering more convictions of those who abuse public-facing workers
*Work with government to raise awareness and to enourage them to understand the extent and challenges related to abuse of public-facing workers
*Work with industry to improve and make communication to the public more consistent
*Work with the press and industry associations to help communicate the messages of the campaign and help get this issue discussed in board rooms around the country
The last 12 months has seen over 150 companies sign the Stamp It Out commitment, including several local authorities, many of who have or are set to roll the campaign out across their regions as well as across departments to ensure all public facing workers can be afforded the same protection as highways workers.
Last month saw the first ever Stamp It Out face-to-face round table debate attending by the Department for Transport, National Highways and the Chief Inspector responsible for leading on Roads Policing and Specialist Operations for Bedfordshire Police, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Constabularies, who undertook a commitment to help get more convictions for those who abuse public-facing workers.
This, alongside the campaign now working with government, and the resources already available such as the free-to-use Jarvis app and conflict avoidance training, marks an important year for the campaign. June will see the second Stamp It Out Summit take place.
Meanwhile, the public-facing campaign Think Respect will be launched the same week. In fact, we will be taking Stamp It Out on tour. This will see a National Highways ‘Chatty Van’ visit four towns and cities in five days to talk to the public about the issues with road worker abuse and also to learn from them how the industry can improve communication with them about road works and why the work road operatives carry out is so important to their every day lives. This will help the campaign understand how we can help influence positive behaviour change.
“Respect our Workforce week marks a vital point in this campaign. But as we look back on a successful 12 months, there is still much work to do towards our aim of eradicating abuse of roadworkers and all those that work on the highway or in a public-facing role. It is not acceptable to abuse a doctor, nurse, teacher or retailer worker, so why should those working on the public highway accept this too?,” said Kevin Robinson, founder and Campaign Director of Stamp It Out and Think Respect.
