Domestic violence is a NZ epidemic:
- One in three NZ women are physically or sexually abused by an intimate (ex) partner in their lifetime.
- Rates of intimate partner violence are similar or higher in the Rainbow community than NZ overall.
- NZ Police attend a domestic violence callout every four minutes.
Any large employer, and many smaller employers, will have employees who experience domestic violence. Increasingly, NZ businesses also want to provide a safe and supportive response to customers who experience domestic violence.
Domestic violence has a significant impact on the workplace - on the wellbeing and productivity of employees who experience it, or with someone close to them experiencing it, and their co-workers. It also impacts on the wellbeing and productivity of employees who perpetrate it.
Employers and businesses can play a vital role in creating a safe and supportive workplace for employees who experience domestic violence, holding staff accountable for work-related domestic violence while supporting change, and driving a culture shift to dramatically reduce NZ rates of domestic violence. Taking steps to create a good domestic violence workplace programme and customer response programme demonstrates social responsibility, and proactively contributes to solving an insidious social problem.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) includes actions by abusive partners that aim to undermine their partner’s employment and independence through sabotage, stalking and harassment (Swanberg et al, 2005):
- Sabotage can be anything from hiding or destroying a work phone or laptop, making the partner late for work, or disrupting their sleep so they are tired at work.
- Stalking involves following the person to work, while they are on work business, or staying just outside the workplace. 17% of employees separated from an abusive partner reported being stalked by their ex-partners outside of their workplace or house – behaviour that is highly correlated with high risk violence (McFarlane et al, 2002)
- Harassment involves behaviours that directly interfere with the victim working, for example constantly interrupting them at work with visits, phone calls, emails, texts, etc. or coming into the workplace to distract, annoy, or monitor the person.
In a PSA Survey of 1626 members (Rayner-Thomas, 2013), 26% of participants reported having personal experience of domestic violence and 58% of those participants were in paid employment at the time the domestic violence occurred. The survey also found:
“Domestic violence affected the ability to get to work for 38% of participants, with 62% reporting that physical injury or restraint was responsible for their difficulties and 65% reporting that concerns over childcare were responsible. Over half (53%) of participants in paid employment reported that they needed to take time off from work because of the abuse. Most participants reported that the domestic violence impacted on their work performance by either making them late for work (84%) or making them distracted, tired or unwell (16%). Slightly more than half of participants (53%) did not disclose their abuse to anyone in their workplace, with privacy and shame being the most commonly cited reasons (92%).”
According to the NZ Family Violence Clearinghouse (2014), “Studies have shown that women who experience intimate partner violence have difficulty maintaining consistent employment, as frequently they are forced to resign, or their positions are terminated because of the way intimate partner violence interferes with work.”
Employees experiencing domestic violence report feeling distracted, tired, unwell, needing to take time off for medical or legal reasons, being forced to take time off by the abusive partner, being late for work, being too upset to work, and so on. Women who experience severe intimate partner violence are eight times more likely to attempt suicide (NZ Ministry of Justice Crime and Safety Survey, 2009).
For someone experiencing domestic violence, secure employment can improve or secure financial stability, promote physical safety, increase self-esteem, improve social connectedness, and ‘purpose in life’. Furthermore, people who had experienced domestic violence report that the workplace acts as a respite from their abuser, and provides important stretches of time where they have physical safety and can make plans to leave their abusive partner.
When an employee is experiencing domestic violence, this also impacts on work colleagues. One study showed that 45% of people who experienced domestic violence while employed disclosed their abuse to work colleagues (Safe at Home, Safe at Work survey, UNSW Australia 2011). Often people know or suspect that a colleague is experiencing domestic violence, even when it’s not disclosed.
Co-workers may feel distressed and anxious, try to help the employee, cover for the employee’s decreased productivity or missed work, or they may be directly harassed, threatened or harmed by the abusive person.
The PSA member survey (Rayner-Thomas, 2013) found that of the 252 participants who knew that a friend or colleague had experienced domestic violence, “27% reported that the domestic violence their friend or colleague experienced created conflict and tension with their co-workers.” (33% said they didn’t know what kind of experiences their friend had in their workplace).
More serious impacts on wellbeing – for example when an employee is killed or seriously injured by an abusive (ex) partner, can have a serious impact on wellbeing for all employees within an organisation.
Domestic violence also impacts on employees when they have someone close to them outside of work who is experiencing domestic violence – a friend or family member – and may be struggling to understand what’s happening and know what to do. They are likely to be distracted or distressed and miss work to help their friend or family member.
It’s important for domestic violence workplace programmes to also consider how to respond to employees that perpetrate domestic violence. Employees who perpetrate domestic violence sometimes use work time and work resources to perpetrate domestic violence, and are often targeting an employee in the same workplace. In addition to harming the person they are targeting, their behaviour also impacts on workplace productivity and can pose a risk to the reputation of their employer, especially if the employee is in a senior role or works with vulnerable people in their role.
Employees perpetrating domestic violence who want support to change rarely receive information or support from their employer to help them find and engage with appropriate services.
A 2004 USA study (State of Maine, Department of Labor) of domestic violence offenders found:
- 78% used workplace resources at least once to express remorse or anger, check up on, pressure, or threaten the victim.
- 70% of offenders lost 15,221 hours of work time due to their domestic violence arrests.
- 48% of offenders had difficulty concentrating at work, with 19% reporting a workplace accident or near miss from inattentiveness due to preoccupation with their relationship
- 42% were late to work
New Zealand Employers bear significant economic costs associated with domestic violence, estimated in 2014 to be at least $368 million per year. With nothing changing, those projections indicated total costs of at least $3.7 billion in the next ten years. (Kahui et al, 2014)
Meeting the minimum legal obligations is not enough to provide a safe and supportive workplace for staff who experience domestic violence.
Go here for a comparison of DVFREE workplace recommendations vs legal requirements, relating to the Domestic Violence Victims Protection Act 2018 and other relevant laws.
If your organisation deals directly with the public, then your frontline staff will likely be exposed to customers who experience, and perpetrate, domestic violence. This may be in obvious ways, such as witnessing someone physically assault their partner or child in your premises. Or it may be in less obvious ways, such as a customer who cannot pay their bill because of their partner’s financial abuse.
Financial institutions are required by the NZ Financial Markets Authority to demonstrate how they meet the needs of customers experiencing vulnerability, of which customers experiencing domestic violence are a key group.
Customers experiencing or perpetrating domestic violence impact more on some organisations than others. Some are more likely to get disclosures from customers because their frontline staff establish longer term relationships with customers, or often speak with them privately, or visit them in their home. Hairdressers, nannies, plumbers, are just a few examples.
Some organisations are more likely to get disclosures from customers because the abuse impacts on their interaction with the organisation, for example financial abuse impacting on someone’s interactions with their bank or insurance company.
Staff who are exposed to family violence or hear disclosures about family violence from customers are likely to feel frightened or stressed, and not know what to do, which may lead them to do nothing or do the wrong thing that is unhelpful or unsafe for the customer. At best, these can be missed opportunities to provide support and a path to safety for someone in a time of crisis. At worst, staff may put customers more at risk and/or put your business at risk by doing the wrong thing.
Your organisation can take proactive steps to create appropriate policy and procedures, and provide necessary training for key staff, so that your frontline staff have clear guidance and support for responding to customers who experience or perpetrate domestic violence.