Conflict and Violence Risk Management in Retail
An exceptional Values-Based Conflict and Violence Reduction training programme for retail workplaces.
Research shows that retailers are most concerned about:
- Violence against staff
- Theft by customers
- Verbal Abuse against staff
- Robbery
- Anti-Social Behaviour
Conflict Management Training ensures staff are:
- Treating people with dignity by showing them respect
- Gaining Voluntary Collaboration, Cooperation or Compliance
- Creating an atmosphere of Non-Escalation by tackling Gateway Behaviours
- Initiating Contact Consistently and then applying Empathy and Persuasion
- Responding appropriately in high-risk situations.
Managing Conflict and Violence Risk in Retail
Learning Outcomes:
An Evidence-Based Contextual Training Approach
With the help of academic colleagues at Loughborough University, we are continually developing enhanced learning design methodology which ensures that your training budget is spent on best-value activities. Our training is therefore:
EMOTIONALLY SAFE – delivered in a supportive environment where effort and engagement are rewarded and in which failure is seen as a necessary step towards mastery of target content.
CONTEXTUALISED TO WORKPLACE SCENARIOS – focuses on exploring the complete picture of the most common flashpoint scenarios which are familiar to your team’s experience of the workplace.
FULL-SPECTRUM OF APPROPRIATE RESPONSES – incorporates positional, non-verbal, verbal, emotional, mental and physical attitudes required for a successful, professional response.
PERFORMANCE-ORIENTED – your learners perform the target skills, often in the face of designed-in, desirable difficulties and receive immediate, objective feedback to improve their performance.
PRACTICE-BASED – your team are repeatedly faced with and engaged in work-like encounters and incidents on which their individual and team performance is assessed from multiple points-of-view.
TRAINING DELIVERY
The standout features of our training is that it is Practice-based and Performance-focussed – your teams will be up and moving in the training room, exploring scenarios and contexts which are relevant to their work and our training demands that they produce the words, behaviours and strategies in-vivo, in the classroom, so that they retain them better when they go back to their workplace.
You can see a video example of our conflict management training for a Winter Shelter / Homelessness Outreach team here: https://vimeo.com/363554520/
YOUR TRAINER: Dynamis is an Institute of Conflict Management-accredited Quality Award Centre #2201
Our trainers have a minimum of the following:
- BTEC Level 3 PTTLLS Preparing to Teach for Lifelong Learning education qualification
- BTEC Level 3 Advanced Self-Defence Instructor Qualification
- BTEC Level 3 Conflict Management Qualification
Conflict Training for Your Team, Your Context
This conflict management training course is suitable for front-line staff who are in regular contact with members of the public and service users who may become frustrated, upset or aggressive. This training focusses on verbal and non-verbal conflict communications used to manage and de-escalate aggression and distress effectively.
When: Full-Day or 2-Day sessions on a date scheduled for your convenience
Who: up to 16 staff are led by one of our Vistelar-trained, “Verbal Defense and Influence” Conflict Coaches.
What Roles? Any public-facing role or contact-professional within your retail organisation who has responsibility for interacting with, influence, persuading or de-escalating your customers will benefit from training to help you to create a safe and secure environment in your workplaces.
Where: At a venue of your choice, or at your service/business training centre
How: Our trainers deliver this course using a mix of lecture/presentation, Q&A, physical practice and scenario rehearsal using an “Emotionally Safe, Performance-driven Training Environment”
Why Choose this Course?
✓ Matched to your Conflict, Risk and Violence Reduction Skills needs
✓ Led by Professional Conflict, Risk and Violence Reduction Skills Trainers
✓ Values Dignity and Respect as part of a ‘Dignity at Work’ approach
✓ Safeguards Customer rights in conflict situations
✓ Offers Staff Practical Options using Templates for Conflict Communications
✓ Compliant with Government Regulations on Risk Reduction
✓ Value for Your Conflict Management Investment
The experts at Vistelar have been studying how to effectively manage conflict for over 30 years and, during that time, they have developed a framework that provides a means to analyze interactions and determine which conflict management tactic should be used in which phase of an interaction.
Here is a graphic representation of this framework:
The blue boxes in this graphic describe the three elements of all interactions:
- Context: Approach considerations prior to an interaction, such as assessment of risk and physical positioning, decision on whether to proceed and personal mindset.
- Contact: Interaction considerations, such as words used, tone of voice, facial expressions, eye contact, hand position, body language and posture.
- Closure: Follow-through considerations, such as ensuring the situation is stabilized, summarizing decisions, and reviewing the interaction.The primary goals of these elements are non-escalation (conflict prevention), achieving the best possible outcome and establishing a positive foundation for any future interactions.The red boxes in the graphic describe what can happen when interactions escalate:
- Conflict: When questioning, anger or verbal abuse enters into an interaction.
- Crisis: When the person with whom you are interacting is displaying at-risk behaviors.
- Combat: When resistance or aggression results in physical engagement initiated by either party.Note: while uncomfortable to some, the term “Combat” is used as a means to emphasize that physical engagement is a possibility in all jobs and must not be glossed over in conflict management training.The primary goals of these elements are de-escalation, everyone’s safety, and shifting the situation to a positive outcome.In other words, once an interaction escalates to any of the red box elements, the objective is to return things to a place where the blue box elements are driving the interaction.Note that all interactions have a Context, Contact and Closure element but only some interactions escalate to Conflict, Crisis and/or Combat.
Core Value
We teach your staff how to “Treat People with Dignity by Showing them Respect” and how to “Generate Voluntary Collaboration, Cooperation or Compliance” when they deal with your customers. Here are the learning objectives for Dynamis core Non-Escalation and De-Escalation conflict management curriculum from Vistelar.
By the end of this Conflict and Violence Risk Reduction training program your staff will have the knowledge to interact with customers and to manage conflict professionally by:
- Not cause or unnecessarily escalate conflict
- Confidently deal with verbal abuse
- Engage in difficult conversations
- Effectively de-escalate conflict
- Persuade others to cooperate
- Stay safe in crisis situations
- Know what to do when word-based tactics fail
- End an interaction in a better place than where it started
- Look good on camera no matter where an interaction ends up
What Retailers Say:
- Retailers perceive that 50% of repeat offenders are motivated by a drug or alcohol addiction.
- 83% of staff in convenience stores have experienced verbal abuse.
- Estimated number of violent incidents is 9,782 with 41% of violent incidents result in injury.
- 48% of retailers have experienced violence or verbal abuse.
- 27% of retailers say they have seen an increase in incidents
For more information see the ACS Crime Report 2019.
We focus on the “tactics” of a conflict management encounter: the meshing of the non-verbal, verbal and physical techniques – the continuum of options that exist in any interaction – to deliver the best outcome.
In other words, we emphasise the application of techniques across the spectrum of conflict — the “Six Cs of Communications” (see list below) — using a level of intrusiveness appropriate for each technique being applied.
1. Context: the approach considerations and initial assessment of the interaction focussing on being prepared for success
2. Contact: how to make an initial contact that doesn’t escalate a situation and is focused on treating others with dignity by showing them respect
3. Conflict: how to stay safe and prevent disagreements from progressing to emotional or physical violence
4. Crisis: how to stay safe and de-escalate a situation when the subject is apparently under the influence of personal stress, drugs & alcohol, or mental health issues.
5. Combat: how to apply the appropriate personal protection and physical control tactics to stabilise a situation when words alone fail.
6. Closure: how to normalise a situation after an incident, which includes reassuring the subject, providing medical treatment and debriefing the incident.
This “tactics” approach to training includes “skill-station” drills – where numerous techniques are applied together in real-world scenarios – which allows the delivery of training in short modules.
- The training course from Dynamis fulfilled or exceeded expectations 99.6%
- Our Dynamis instructor had a very good or excellent level of knowledge and competence 98.2%
- The theory and knowledge components helped me professionally 98.9%
- The techniques and tactics were appropriate to real scenarios in our work 98.6%
- Our Dynamis trainer observed good Health and Safety practices 100%
- The Dynamis training course was of the right duration to gain the skills and knowledge I needed 91.2%
