A national logistics operator engaged us to address rising workplace-violence incidents across its network. Frontline staff were facing escalating aggression with no structured way to surface concerns or manage threats before they turned serious. Our mandate was to put a proportionate threat-assessment and case-management discipline in place, and to give people a safe route to raise what they were seeing.
The challenge
Frontline staff were absorbing escalating aggression with no structured way to surface or manage threats before they escalated. Warning signs that should have prompted early intervention were instead going unrecorded, and the organisation had no consistent means of assessing or acting on them.
Without a confidential channel, staff often had nowhere safe to raise a concern, and managers had no shared method for judging seriousness or deciding what to do. The result was that situations were left to escalate when earlier, proportionate action could have contained them.
Our approach
We implemented a threat-assessment programme that gave the organisation a common, proportionate way to judge concerns and decide on a response. The method helped managers distinguish genuine risk from everyday friction and act in measured steps, so that intervention matched the seriousness of each case rather than over- or under-reacting.
Around that we built case management, so that once a threat was identified it was tracked through to resolution rather than handled once and forgotten. Each case carried a clear owner and a record of action, which gave the organisation both follow-through and an evidence base it could learn from.
We trained managers to run the discipline and built a confidential reporting channel so concerns could surface early and safely. The workstreams were:
- A threat-assessment method for judging concerns proportionately
- Case management to track each threat through to resolution
- Manager training to apply the discipline consistently across sites
- A confidential reporting channel so staff could raise concerns safely
- A network-wide rollout extending the programme across operating sites
The outcome
Every reported threat was actioned, which meant staff who came forward saw their concerns taken seriously and followed through. That reliability is what gives a confidential channel its value, and it changed the relationship between frontline staff and the organisation's response.
The effect on safety was substantial: serious incidents fell by 63 per cent across the thirty-one sites where the programme was rolled out. By surfacing concerns early and managing them proportionately, the operator was able to intervene before situations escalated rather than respond after harm was done.
Our people finally have a safe way to tell us what they are seeing, and they know we will act on it. Cutting serious incidents by nearly two-thirds followed directly from that trust.
The reduction proved durable because the programme changed how the organisation works rather than simply adding a control. With trained managers, a confidential channel staff trust, and case management that closes the loop, the operator has an enduring discipline for catching and defusing aggression early across all thirty-one sites.