The attack on Asda workers last month was horrific – and what’s worse is it wasn’t a one off. Incidents like this are on the rise. Research from The Institute of Customer Service has reported a significant rise in incidents of abuse since the start of the pandemic, with more than half of customer-facing staff experiencing abuse from customers since the Covid outbreak – ranging from verbal abuse such as shouting and abusive language to, in the most extreme cases, physical assaults.

With 80% of the UK’s workforce working in customer-facing roles, this mounting abuse is affecting staff across every sector – from retail to public services; financial institutions to public transport networks.

Our front-line workers, who have done so much to keep our communities going over the past year, are facing verbal and in some cases physical abuse on a near daily basis. And there aren’t proper laws in place to protect those in customer facing roles from this abuse. This really needs to change.

If you have faced abuse at work – in whatever form – I’d encourage you to please take my survey and share your experience, so I can launch a campaign to tighten our laws and protect all of our frontline workers from abuse in their place of work.