The five responsibilities of all involved during a physical intervention are to coordinate and lead, monitor the person continuously, keep de-escalating, use the minimum force necessary for the shortest time, and observe and record. These apply while the intervention is happening. Once it ends, a separate set begins – see the six responsibilities immediately following […]
PMVA training is training in the prevention and management of violence and aggression. It teaches staff to recognise a situation building before it turns violent, to bring it back down wherever possible, and to use safe and lawful physical intervention only where there is no safer alternative. The term is used mainly within the NHS, […]
Quick checklist: managing a difficult customer safely ✓ Respond to the specific behaviour, not the tone and try and stay factual, not personal. ✓ Set a clear boundary early on, naming the exact behaviour that needs to stop. ✓ Watch for any change from difficult to potentially unsafe, such as a raised voice, closing distance, […]
Who is responsible for resolving conflict in a bar? It depends how far it’s gone – the important thing to know is that responsibility should sit on an escalation ladder. Here’s a helpful way to understand responsibilities, plus a quick-reference table you can print and keep behind the bar. This happens Who deals with it […]
You’re unable to handle conflict because in the moment, your brain’s stress response is taking over before you get the chance to think it through. Your hear rate spikes, your focus narrows, and your instinct is to freeze, appease, or overreact, not because of a personality flaw, but because there’s no trained process to fall […]
Any member of school staff has the legal power to use reasonable force, not just teachers. Under Section 93 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, this power applies to any paid member of staff at a school, and can extend to people a headteacher has temporarily placed in charge of pupils, such as unpaid […]
The core de-escalation steps are the same whichever direction the aggression is coming from – stay calm, give space, use short clear language. What’s different with a customer is the decision layered on top: whether to keep trying to resolve their issue, or draw a line and refuse service, which most staff have more legal […]
Listen to the whole complaint before responding, even if you can predict where it’s going – cutting in early to offer a fix often reads as not having actually heard the problem. Acknowledge specifically what went wrong rather than giving a generic apology; “that’s twice this order has come out wrong” lands better than “sorry […]
Let them finish before you respond as interrupting to explain or defend, even with good intentions, reads as dismissive and tends to make someone more frustrated, not less. Once they’ve said their piece, reflect the issue back in your own words so they know it landed. Lead with what you can do, not what you […]
Stay factual rather than personal and respond to what was said or done, not the tone it was said in. Reacting to rudeness with rudeness (even subtly, through a sharper tone or crossed arms) tends to escalate rather than resolve the interaction. Set a boundary early rather than absorbing it and hoping it passes. A […]
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