Abuse Through a Screen: 4 Duties Owed to Support Teams
Software companies, fintechs, insurers and platforms all employ people whose job is to absorb other people's frustration. Support agents, service desks, claims handlers, account teams and moderators, working through chat, email, phone and social channels.
The abuse those roles receive is well documented inside the organisations concerned and almost never appears in a risk assessment. Physical safety arrangements cover the building, psychosocial arrangements cover workload, and the specific exposure of being insulted, threatened or targeted by customers for eight hours a day sits between them.
Four duties. The fourth changes the position materially and takes effect this October.
1. Abuse through a screen is still abuse
Start with the framing, because the medium is doing a lot of work in how organisations perceive this.
An agent who is threatened over live chat has been threatened. One who receives a stream of personal insults by email has received them. That the sender is not in the room changes the physical risk and not the psychological exposure, and in some respects it worsens it: contact can be repeated, persistent, and delivered at volume in a way that in-person aggression cannot.
Regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 requires assessment of the risks to the health of employees, and health includes mental health. Where a role systematically exposes people to hostility, that is foreseeable rather than exceptional, and HSE's guidance on violence at work addresses verbal abuse and threats alongside physical violence.
The practical test for whether your organisation has recognised this: does the phrase "customer abuse" appear anywhere in your risk assessment, or only in your support team's internal channel.
2. The design of the work determines the exposure
The part that is within the employer's control, and it is mostly about volume and autonomy.
Four design factors decide how damaging this work is.
Queue pressure. Where agents are measured on handle time, contacts per hour or queue depth, ending a hostile interaction costs them against their own metrics. That is an organisational decision that makes people absorb abuse rather than end it.
Whether they may disengage. The single most important control is an explicit, senior statement that an agent may end any contact that becomes abusive, without seeking permission and without it counting against them. Most organisations believe they have this and have never said it.
Repetition and targeting. Where the same customer returns, or where an agent's name or photograph is visible, the exposure becomes personal rather than transactional. Pseudonymous handles and routing rules that prevent a repeat contact reaching the same person are cheap and effective.
Recovery. Back-to-back contacts with no interval after a serious incident is the arrangement most likely to convert a bad interaction into a lasting one.
HSE's Management Standards identify demands, control and support among the six areas an assessment should cover, and all three are engaged here.
3. Support has to be real, reachable and informed
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The response side, where provision is common and use is rare.
Three things distinguish support that works from support that exists.
Reachable at the right hours. Support desks run evenings, nights and weekends. A central number available on weekdays does not serve the people most exposed.
Delivered by somebody who understands the work. A supervisor who has done the role can recognise when an agent is struggling. A generic helpline cannot.
Not routed through the person setting the targets. Where the only escalation path runs through the manager whose metrics the escalation affects, people do not use it.
Alongside that sits recording. An incident log that captures abusive contacts, rather than only technical faults, is what turns individual experiences into a pattern the organisation can act on. Most support tooling can do this and has not been configured to.
4. From October 2026 this becomes a specific legal duty
The change that should prompt action now rather than later.
Employers already carry liability for harassment by their own employees in the course of employment under section 109 of the Equality Act 2010, and a preventative duty in respect of sexual harassment has applied since October 2024.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 strengthens that duty to taking all reasonable steps and reinstates employer liability for harassment of staff by third parties, including customers. Government implementation material published in July 2026 gives the date as 30 October 2026, having moved it from 1 October.
Three consequences for a support function.
Customers are third parties. A support team is among the most exposed populations in any organisation, because contact with third parties is the entirety of the role.
Commentary indicates a single incident may suffice to fix liability, unless all reasonable steps were taken. There is no requirement to show a pattern.
The expected foundation is a risk assessment. Guidance under the existing duty expects employers to assess the risks of harassment and the steps needed to mitigate them, taking account of the working environment and contact with third parties. A support operation whose assessment does not mention customer contact has not done that. Acas publishes guidance on sexual harassment.
Confirm the current position and the precise obligations through employment advice, since dates in this area have already moved once.
The four, in short
| Duty | Common position | What is needed |
|---|---|---|
| Recognition | Not in the assessment | Named as a foreseeable exposure |
| Work design | Metrics make people absorb it | Explicit right to end contacts, routing, recovery |
| Support | A number in a handbook | Reachable at working hours, informed, not via the target-setter |
| October 2026 | Not connected to support teams | Assessment covering third-party contact |
The second row is where the improvement actually comes from, and it costs nothing beyond a decision. An agent who knows they may end an abusive contact behaves differently from one who believes ending it will show up in their numbers.
For international operations
Two considerations, and both matter because this work is so often delivered offshore.
Several jurisdictions already go further than Britain. Finland requires procedural instructions prepared in advance where work involves an evident threat of violence, and treats harassment originating from customers as within the employer's duty. Chile requires tailored prevention protocols expressly covering violence from clients and users, with complaints notified to the insurance administrator. Sweden and Denmark regulate the organisational working environment directly.
The duty follows the work, not the contract. Where support is delivered by a provider in the Philippines, Colombia, India or Egypt, the local employer carries the national obligations and your organisation sets the volume, the metrics and the escalation rules. That is your undertaking, and specifying an operation in which agents cannot end abusive contacts is a specification decision rather than a supplier problem.
Holding assessments, incident logs and provider requirements in one register across every site is where health and safety consultants and software are worth more together than either alone, and periodic health and safety audits test whether the right to disengage described centrally is one agents believe they have.
Where Arinite fits
Arinite assesses the work people actually do, which for a support operation is a psychosocial exposure rather than a building. We support 1,500+ businesses across 50+ countries and protect 100,000+ employees, with 95%+ client retention over 15+ years. Our health and safety consultants work extensively with IT and software, insurance and finance and banking organisations, all of which run customer-facing teams at scale.
Where operations span several countries, our global health and safety consultants establish what each jurisdiction requires of third-party conduct and psychosocial assessment, and our international health and safety consultants keep that current.
If your support team could describe last month's worst customer and your risk assessment could not, a free gap analysis is the right place to start.
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Written by
Arinite Health & Safety Consultants
Health & Safety Expert at Arinite
