Waste workers clean up their act

Citation

(2002), "Waste workers clean up their act", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 34 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2002.03734fab.002

Waste workers clean up their act

Waste workers clean up their act

A training initiative is helping waste workers at civic amenity sites in the English county of Surrey to deal with the provocation they receive from some members of the public.

"More than anything we wanted the staff to learn new ways of dealing with the public. We also wanted them to see when it was best to walk away when things were becoming too heated," said Natalie Riches, recycling co-ordinator at Surrey Waste, a SITA subsidiary.

The company has employed London-based Stirling Training Consultants (STC), a specialist in interpersonal development, to help staff to face the issues in a way that both engages them and motivates change.

STC consultant Huw Powell, who carried out the training, explained: "When I heard what these people had to put up with I knew we all had a lot of hard work to do. For example, recently a group of travellers had been to a site and pulled down the perimeter fence for scrap metal. When the workers challenged them it ended up in a nasty confrontation. It is clear that the staff are often being provoked by members of the public in this way, and they had begun to meet such provocation with aggressive behaviour."

One of Huw Powell's first challenges was to get the staff to work with him to improve customer service. He did this by focusing initially on customer service from the staff point of view. How did they like to be treated as customers? How would they judge good service? What kinds of words, gestures and behaviour would accompany the kind of service that made them feel valued?

The training then concentrated on personal motivation to hook the interest of the site workers and transform that interest into a desire to rise above the provocations of the public.

For example, staff recounted incidents of customers whose tempers flared when they had to queue on a hot summer's day, and of sole traders who became aggressive when refused permission to dump their trade waste at a public amenity site. Some it appeared simply misunderstood the rules while others were deliberately pushing the boundaries. However, complaints from both groups meant that the waste staff were scoring poorly on their customer-satisfaction targets.

Huw Powell said: "They needed to become adept at picking up customer's drivers, or signals, so that they could respond quickly and appropriately. It made the whole process far more personal and, as a result, people also began to see how worthwhile their job could be."

Natalie Riches commented: "I wished I could have been a fly on the wall at this training event. All the staff got something out of it and came out of the day smiling and reporting that they felt very positive."