Study 4: Focus Group Discussions

The goal of the focus groups was to bring together a mixture of relevant organisations/customer-facing roles to identify training/awareness needs and colleagues’ views on different aspects of organisational processes, including post-incident care and the reporting of work-related violence. Nevertheless, we will only document the findings of the focus groups as they relate to BWV. To this extent, we approached 13 rail organisations (LNER, Avanti West Coast, Southeastern, TPE, EMR, ScotRail, GTR, GWR, West Midland Trains, Cross Country Trains, Hull Trains, TfL, and NWR) across the United Kingdom to take part in the focus groups. We focused on customer-facing roles, including train drivers, health and safety representatives, and security guards. These roles reflect the diverse workforce within the rail industry and, therefore, offer a variety of views and perceptions on violence in the workplace. We requested a mixture of participants who have and have not experienced work-related violence and have used or are, in some capacity, familiar with BWV.