Unfortunately, staff at New Gorbals Housing Association have been subjected to an increase in unacceptable and abusive behaviour in recent months.
Following a survey carried out in April-May 2023, 76% of customer-facing staff said they had faced unacceptable behaviour in the past year. 73% also said that they believed they had faced abusive behaviour in the last 12 months.
We understand that during the current Cost of Living crisis, our tenants may be feeling under more pressure than usual, however at New Gorbals Housing Association, we do not tolerate abusive or unacceptable behaviour. We ask that you treat staff fairly, and we expect staff to treat you fairly too – as Facing Abuse Isn’t Reasonable.
If you treat staff in an unacceptable or abusive way, we will make you aware of this and we may place some restrictions on your contact with us.
Examples of unacceptable behaviour include:
- Swearing and aggressive language
- Making threats in person, on the phone or via letter or email
- Violence and aggression
- Making unreasonable demands, such as asking us to complete a task in an unreasonable timescale and sending excessive emails, letters or calls about this
- Unreasonable persistence, such as relentlessly contacting the office and refusing to accept a decision
Action we may take if your behaviour is unacceptable
- Terminate the phone call
- Call the police
- Limited contact, such as providing a single person to contact or email-only contact
- Contact through a third party such as NGHA solicitors or relevant mediator
In all cases of unacceptable behaviour, we will contact you to explain what actions we consider unacceptable and why. We will ask you to amend your behaviour and explain what actions we may take if you do not.
Where we must act, we will tell you in writing what action we are taking and why. We may also offer to meet you at our office to discuss the unacceptable actions and agree a way forward.
Full details of the actions the Association deems unacceptable, and how we may deal with this, can be found in our Unacceptable Actions Policy here.
