DVFREE: Workplace & Customer Responses

First responders are peer support people in your workplace who can support employees experiencing domestic violence, and also support managers. This is a one day in-person training or delivered online over two consecutive mornings. It helps First Responders to:

• understand the boundaries of the role
• recognise signs and respond safely and appropriately
• provide workplace support, safety and wellbeing planning, and refer to specialist community support and
• understand broadly how an employer can respond to employees who perpetrate domestic violence, and provide support to change

Organisations can book in-house First Responder Training for their venue or online. (DVFREE Tick Partner Organisation First Responders can attend Experienced level training in years 3 and 4.)

Contact us now for more information or to book. 

Individuals can register to attend open First Responder Training either online or in-person in Auckland. If your organisation plans to train more than a few people, we strongly recommend in-house training so that the training can focus on the context of your particular organisation and help build a stronger team of first responders.

Find out more or register now. 

Managers play a key role in supporting a team member who experiences domestic violence and are most likely to see the signs and be able to ask some initial questions. DVFREE Tick partners can access the DVFREE Manager Online Learning Programme, included in our DVFREE Tick Partnership annual fee.

While our best practice recommendation is to provide live training for initial manager training, we can also deliver this training online. Either option is 3.5 hours long.

DVFREE training helps managers to:

• understand the boundaries of a manager’s role
• recognise signs and respond safely and with empathy
• provide workplace support, workplace safety and wellbeing planning, and support to connect with specialist community support, and
• understand broadly how an employer can provide accountability and support for employees who use harmful behaviour within a family and domestic relationship

Contact us for a more in-depth overview of DVFREE manager training.

We generally only deliver manager training for an organisation that has already trained some first responders. Read our Guidelines to understand why this is important.

This training is aimed at people who:

• Deal with customers impacted by domestic violence in their day to day work, eg, providing a service for customers experiencing vulnerability, or who
• Support and advise frontline staff on how to respond to customers experiencing domestic violence, such as a group of team leaders.

Bespoke Training Options

Get in touch to discuss bespoke training to meet your organisation’s specific needs.

Contact us now to discuss your needs.

COMING IN 2026

These self-directed modules will be available later this year, aimed at frontline staff who deal with customers. The modules will help staff recognise and respond to customers impacted by domestic violence and economic abuse, refer them to family violence services, and liaise internally with their Customer Response Champions. 

This frontline staff training will be most effective when introduced after appointing and training Customer Response Champions and creating a domestic violence customer policy. It will be available as part of a DVFREE Customer Response service package.

DVFREE Policy experts can help you to create or improve your Domestic Violence Policy, procedures, or other relevant documents such as content of your intranet or wellbeing guide whether they are for employees, customers or both.

Contact us now to discuss your needs.

Created in collaboration with Good Shepherd economic harm experts, this sample policy can be adapted for organisations as an excellent starting point for supporting a safe and fair response to customers who experience family violence, which includes economic abuse. 

Download for free here.

This module was created in collaboration by Westpac and Shine, and updated in 2025. It takes less than 1 hour to complete and provides a good introduction to family violence within a workplace context.

There are many ways to engage, inspire and educate staff about domestic violence.

One idea is to participate in Shine’s Light it Orange campaign to raise funds and awareness or you may want to ask your local domestic violence service provider about how you can support their work.