4 Key Elements of an Effective Workplace Violence Plan (Part 2)

California’s new workplace violence prevention law requires that employers train employees in strategies to avoid physical harm from workplace violence.

Unlike other parts of the law, California does not specify what it means by strategies to avoid physical harm. So employers have to figure out on their own what will help their employees avoid physical harm.

In this piece, I’ll discuss some of the strategies to avoid physical harm that I’ve trained employees in divergent types of organizations ranging from the staff of a US Senator, and court administrators and staff, to legal and medical professionals, educators, and nonprofit organizations.

These strategies are effective. I know. I used them myself during 30 years of working in dangerous environments. And learned them through conducting many litigation investigations into workplace violence including shootings, beatings, assaults, and sexual assaults.

California’s new workplace violence prevention law goes into effect on July 1. Struggling with how and where to begin? Download my California workplace violence prevention checklist and get started today.  

Situational Awareness 

I started working as a litigation investigator in the late 1980s. I had to write a lot of reports to convey the information I learned from witnesses. Writing was not my strongest skill.  

To get better at writing, I took a short term writing course at night at Santa Monica High School. One night, in need of coffee, I set out to a donut shop at the corner. 

I crossed the street and headed up the sidewalk. All of the sudden, I noticed a guy up ahead leaning against a fence. As I continued walking, he moved off of the fence and onto the side walk. 

As he did that, I saw something metal he was holding in his right hand reflect light from a nearby street light. This was not good. And I couldn’t double back or cross the street to avoid him because of heavy traffic.

But, because I recognized before reaching him that he was a safety threat, I had enough time to formulate a safety plan before encountering him.

The metal in his hand, turned out to be a sharpened piece of metal, a shank, that could be used to stab someone. There was no doubt he intended to rob me using the threat of the shank. 

But, because I saw the flash of light and recognized the safety risk he never got the chance.

Situational awareness is about recognizing a possible threat before it becomes one, so that you can develop a way to avoid that threat. It is the most important strategy to train employees in when it comes to avoiding physical harm.

In another workplace violence case I worked on, a woman working at a retail store was brutally beaten by an attacker. The store where she worked did no training in avoiding physical harm from violence.

She was working by herself when the man came in. After looking around the store, he asked to use the restroom. When he came out of the rest room, he held a blunt object in his hand and approached her while she was stocking some merchandise. He brutally beat her causing permanent lifelong damage. He then robbed the cash register.

Had she been trained in situational awareness, she would have known to watch him as he returned from the bathroom. Seeing that he was holding a blunt object in his hand early enough would have given her the time to run out the store entrance to safety. Better he rob the place than to harm her for life and rob the place.

But, untrained in strategies to avoid physical harm, she never saw him approach her.

In another case I worked on, a man in a wheelchair, was going aisle to aisle in a grocery store, swinging a hammer at anyone near him while threatening them. Customers did their best to avoid him.

But even after several minutes of this conduct, no employees noticed him. He then attacked a young boy, our client, who was at the store with his parents shopping. Striking the boy in the head.

The store staff was untrained in situational awareness, and other violence incident response skills, and did nothing to prevent his threats to customers and his attack on our client.

The man in the wheelchair then rolled out of the store, and was not arrested until much later at an entirely different location.

Situational awareness is also critical to parking lot safety. And that includes at the workplace, and at client locations too.

Parking lots are the second most dangerous place for attacks, and medical professionals, whose shifts stagger are particularly susceptible to attacks there. Any business where employees come and go at will also face safety risks in the parking lot.

Training your employees in situational awareness can help them avoid a physical attack in a parking lot.

Changing the Dynamics of an Attack

Changing the dynamics of an attack, is critical to avoiding physical harm from workplace violence. 

An attacker develops a plan, even if it’s in just a second or two prior to an attack. Having a plan gives the attacker a distinct advantage at the onset of a violent incident.

One case that I worked on involved a tragic shooting of employees in a restaurant despite the presence of security cameras.

Knowing that he risked being recognized because the restaurant had security cameras, the man herded the restaurant employees into the walk-in cooler. He then stuck his gun inside the cooler, and without even looking started shooting. 

Our client and another employee were badly wounded.

The employees were not trained in strategies to avoid physical harm. 

Had they been trained in such strategies, they would have known to never go into an enclosed, isolated space. Just like training them to never get into a car. Once someone forces you into a closet, a cooler, or a car, the likelihood of your being able to avoid physical harm or to be killed is near zero.

Changing the dynamics of an attack is simply about forcing an attacker out of his game plan. To make him recalibrate his predetermined plan. Forcing him to adjust what he is doing creates opportunity to disrupt an attack. And within that opportunity is the chance to exit safely, or if necessary, to defend yourself and others.

Other Strategies to Avoid Physical Harm

There are other strategies to avoid physical harm.. 

De-escalation is using a combination of listening skills, talking in a way that redirects a potential attacker’s focus, reading his body language, and using your body language, to calm a situation down before the situation can spiral out of control.

I developed my approach to de-escalation during decades of serving court papers, including lawsuits, and restraining orders. No one likes receiving court papers. People can get very emotional and angry as their stress level rises. Those situations can turn in just a matter of seconds.

Using de-escalation skills kept those tense situations from turning violent and helped to calm those receiving the papers. 

De-escalation skills can be applied in your work location between co-workers, out in the community with agitated strangers, or in a client’s home or office.

Self-defense is a powerful strategy to avoid physical harm. In fact, it may be your employees last chance to avoiding being physically harmed when other strategies fail. California’s goal is for your employees to avoid physical harm from violence. That’s why the state requires employers to train employees in strategies to avoid physical harm.

It is the strategy that you hope never to have to use. But, if you do it should be effective. You keep it in your back pocket and only take it out when absolutely necessary.

California specifically understands that acting in self-defense or in defense of others is sometimes necessary for employees. In fact, California specifically references acting in self-defense and in defense of others two times in the new workplace violence prevention act.

But, there’s a right way and a wrong way to incorporate self-defense. 

The wrong way, is to leave employees to their own devices. Unsure of what to do. Like the poor employee at the collectibles store who made the news this week, when a customer began taking collectible cards, and after multiple improvised attempts to stop him, found himself staring straight into the barrel of a gun.

Some employers, not those that I work with, would rather pay a workers comp claim for an employee injury than train their employees in defending themselves safely. Some have calculated it’s more cost effective to risk employee injury rather than face the risk of a lawsuit from a client, customer, or patient who actually attacked their employee.

Again, not the employers I work with. 

Self-defense is not fighting. It’s not MMA. It’s not martial arts. It’s the application of some very basic techniques that are designed to help your employee stop the attack so that she can exit safely, or maintain control.

There are also communication strategies for employees to communicate concern over a potentially hazardous situation, to others they works with, without alerting threatening person that you are doing so. 

Once communicated, employees can implement the buddy system. Which uses the principle that there is safety in numbers as a strategy to avoid physical harm.

These are just a few of the strategies to avoid physical harm. It’s critical for employers to train employees in those strategies to avoid physical harm that are the most relevant to the nature and location of the work.

Get started working on your workplace violence prevention plan today by downloading my free CA workplace violence prevention checklist just click on the link in the description below.