Please respect our teams
Although we might not always get it right first time, we welcome and respect your feedback so we can improve in the future. That might take the form of a conversation, either in person, online, or over the phone, or you might feel you have to raise a complaint.
Whatever the situation, please always respect our teams. We can all get frustrated at times, but it’s important to know that unreasonable behaviour towards our colleagues won’t be tolerated.
Here’s what we mean by unreasonable behaviour
We won’t tolerate aggressive, intimidating, abusive, violating, intimidating, hostile, degrading or humiliating behaviour. This includes things like:
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Threats and behaviour that makes staff feel intimidated or scared
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Physical violence
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Verbal abuse, derogatory remarks, rudeness and foul language (especially if it’s directed at an individual or made personal)
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Anger directed at staff in the form of aggression
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Harassment of any kind, including relating to a protected characteristic or of a sexual nature
Unreasonable demands
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Requesting or providing unreasonable amounts of information
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Expecting a service we can’t provide
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Demanding responses or actions within unreasonable timescales
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Insisting on speaking to a particular member of staff who isn’t relevant
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Continually changing the reason for a complaint or raising unrelated issues through the course of a complaint investigation
Unreasonable persistence
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Excessive contact
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Refusal to accept explanations, decisions, apologies or our policies and procedures
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Continually pursuing a complaint or issue where a decision has been made and a response given, without providing new information or valid reasons why the decision made is not being accepted
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Getting in touch with us about the same issue many times when there’s no clear action that can be taken to resolve it and you can’t suggest a reasonable course of action that we should take
Keeping our colleagues safe and our services running
Our colleagues are here to deliver services for you, our customers, and the communities you live in. But to do that, we need to keep our teams safe so they can carry out their work to the best of their ability. We know that the vast majority of our customers treat our colleagues respectfully, but if we do face unacceptable behaviour, we may have to take action.
This might look like:
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A temporary or permanent restriction on customer contact or engagement
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Ending a call or digital communication if unacceptable behaviour continues
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Reporting any threats to the appropriate internal teams
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Where appropriate, sharing any evidence (like statements, CCTV or copies of correspondence) with a third party like the police
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In the most serious cases, we could take enforcement action against you, which could result in you losing your tenancy
We hope we never have to follow through on any of the above actions, but if we do, we’ll always let the involved customer know within five working days.
These measures are in place to help keep our teams safe so they can keep delivering services. We’d ask that you always consider how your behaviour, words and actions might impact our colleagues – please respect us, as we respect you.
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