Respect Our Workforce & Stamp It Out

The Highways Industry is set to support the very first Respect our Workforce week, taking place 11 – 15 March as part of the Stamp It Out Campaign.

This campaign is calling on the whole supply chain to help raise awareness of the challenges facing our workforce. Later in the week we will also look at the solutions being provided to help solve them.

Did you know?

60% of all roadworkers and other people working on the public highway get abused on a daily basis.

Respect Our Workforce Week aims to empower the workforce and influence a change of attitude towards the highway sector’s workforce.

According to the campaign, 60% of all roadworkers and other people working on the public highway get abused on a daily basis.

The good news is, the amount of reporting of incidents of verbal and physical abuse made by public-facing workers on the highway network has increased significantly over the past year due to the increased awareness of the issue raised by the Stamp It Out campaign. That’s why GTM have signed up to the campaign with the catch-line ‘report it, we’ll sort it’, to encourage further reporting of abuse.

The campaign aims to:

Keep on highlighting the issue of workforce abuse and update the industry on the success of the Stamp It Out campaign

Provide the industry with a number of resources to enable them to support this

Work with police forces around the country to work towards delivering more convictions of those who abuse public-facing workers

Work with Government to raise awareness and to encourage them to understand the extent and challenges related to abuse of public-facing workers

Work with industry to improve and make communication to the public more consistent

Work with the press and industry associations to help communicate the messages of the campaign and help get this issue discussed in board rooms around the country

The last 12 months has seen over 150 companies sign the Stamp It Out commitment, including several local authorities, many of who have or are set to roll the campaign out across their regions as well as across departments to ensure all public facing workers can be afforded the same protection as highways workers.

Last month saw the first ever Stamp It Out face-to-face round table debate, which included GTM Director Louise Cope, as well as the Department for Transport, National Highways and the Chief Inspector responsible for leading on Roads Policing and Specialist Operations for Bedfordshire Police, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Constabularies, who undertook a commitment to help get more convictions for those who abuse public-facing workers.

This, alongside the campaign now working with Government, and the resources already available such as the free-to-use Jarvis app and conflict avoidance training, marks an important year for the campaign. June 2024 will see the second Stamp It Out Summit take place.