Identifying engagement we actively manage

It is important we are consistent when we take approaches to manage engagement and below are examples of when we may need to use one of the approaches above. This list is not exhaustive and we can manage types of engagement or behaviour not listed if it is impacting negatively on individuals or our ability to provide a service.

Violence

Violence is not restricted to acts of aggression that may result in physical harm. It also includes actions or language (whether verbal or written) that would reasonably cause someone to feel offended, afraid or threatened.

Abuse

Abusive language includes all language that is designed or could be perceived as designed to insult or degrade, is racist, sexist or homophobic, or which makes serious allegations that individuals have committed criminal, corrupt or perverse conduct without any supporting evidence.

Language which makes unfounded allegations about an individual’s professional ability or capability or seeks to belittle or denigrate them personally is also unacceptable.

Comments made about Transport Scotland or our staff on social media which are designed to be, or which it is reasonable to assume may be, shared or made public are also covered for the same reason, even if they are not shared directly with us.

Harassment

Harassment of staff, whether accompanied or not by violence or abusive comments, is not acceptable.

Harassment would include:

• repeatedly contacting or continuing to contact individual staff members when previously asked not to
• contacting staff outside of the office to seek to harass them
• targeting and naming them on public or other easily shared social media.

Contact outside the office

Any contact with a complainant outside the office should be discussed with a manager who should decide whether this should be recorded. This includes contact via social network sites and social contact in public places.

Naming and targeting staff publicly

Those who wish to criticise Transport Scotland online are encouraged to name the organisation rather than individuals. Naming of individuals online may lead to restrictions being put in place.

Statements that individuals intend to record and then use that recording publicly or to live stream would be regarded as harassment even if there is no directly abusive content to the statement.

Demands on our organisation

A demand becomes unacceptable when it starts to (or when complying with the demand would) impact substantially on the work of the organisation. An example of such impact would be that the demand takes up an excessive amount of staff time and, in so doing, disadvantages other work.

Examples of actions grouped under this heading include:

• repeatedly demanding responses within an unreasonable timescale
• insisting on seeing or speaking to a particular member of staff when that is not possible
• repeatedly changing the substance of their issue or raising unrelated concerns.

Levels of contact

Sometimes the volume and duration of contact made to Transport Scotland may have an impact on our work. This can occur over a short period, for example, a number of calls in one day or one hour. It may occur over the lifespan of a complaint when someone repeatedly makes long telephone calls or provides information that has been sent already, is irrelevant, or repeats the same or similar issues.

Refusal to co-operate

Transport Scotland want people to work with us during communications. This can include agreeing with us the issues we will look at; providing us with further information relating to queries; or helping us by summarising any concerns.

Repeated refusals to co-operate makes it difficult for us to resolve or provide a suitable answer. Our staff will always seek to assist someone if they have a specific, genuine difficulty complying with a request. However, it is considered unreasonable to bring a matter to us, or ask us to provide a service, and then not respond to reasonable requests.

Use of the complaint processes

Transport Scotland has discretion to pursue any complaint made to us.

Contact becomes unreasonable when the effect of the repeated complaints is to harass, or to prevent the organisation from pursuing a legitimate outcome. We Access to the complaints process is important, and it will only be in exceptional circumstances that repeated uses would be regarded as unacceptable, but the organisation reserves the right to do so in such cases.