A Northland council hopes public profiles of its workers will help humanise them and reduce aggression towards staff.
It comes as Kaipara District Council is seeing an uptick in incidents with intimidation, racial slurs and even physical attacks reported.
Māori Ward Councillor Pera Paniora told Breakfast: "When we got to a certain number of different levels of intimidation and aggression, our CEO decided to start a campaign aimed at personalising and humanising our staff."
"We know that other councils and other organisations that have this level of aggression and intimidation have opted to use security guards at their front doors [but] we want our ratepayers and our citizens to be able to come into the premises and not feel intimidated.
"As with our staff, having to enter their work environment on a daily basis with security there."
Paniora said there have also been incidents after staff were recognised out in the community.
"There's just no place for that," she said, adding the perpetrators are "a small number".
"But it is becoming more common, the trend is trending upwards."
In response, the council is going to profile one of its staff online each week, with the hope it brings the rate of incidents down.
They're calling the campaign "Our Council, Our Community".
"They're our sisters and brothers, our aunties, our uncles, they play in our sports teams and things like that," Paniora said.
"[It's] so that the community can really see them as a person.
"We've just started it, so hopefully it works. We don't want to have to get security, that's another cost to our ratepayers."
Asked if the council would ever consider shutting its doors to the public, Paniora said: "Absolutely. That's always the nuclear option."
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