4 Effective Update Strategies for Workplace Violence Prevention 2025

California’s roll out of the new workplace violence prevention law was a bit on the stealth side. 

OK, more than a bit. 

Many employers hadn’t even heard that California now requires employers to implement an effective workplace violence prevention program. And of those employers that are aware of the new requirement, many feel like they’re navigating in “uncharted waters” in trying to comply.

While California’s roll out was not awesome. The reasoning behind implementing the new law is solid. Workplace violence, and the harm it causes, is all too real. And it can happen to any organization in any industry.

As 2025 begins, it’s time to move from uncharted waters to solid ground with your workplace violence prevention program.

These four strategies will help you assess your current workplace violence prevention program for effectiveness, as required by California, and help you identify improvements to your prevention program that will help keep your employees safer.

The consequences of even a single incident of workplace violence can be devastating to your employees and to your organization. There’s no pound of cure once violence happens. That’s why California now requires that employers develop and implement an effective workplace violence prevention program that’s specific to the safety hazards your employees face, as well as to provide your employees with annual training, including in strategies to avoid physical harm from workplace violence, in order to prevent violence and its devastating aftermath.

In order to prevent violence, you need to understand how violence occurs. I spent 30 years conducting investigations into workplace and community violence. I learned first hand the ways that violence occurs, and how violence can be prevented. For over 10 years I’ve helped employers implement effective workplace violence prevention programs, and to train employees in strategies to avoid physical harm from violence.

My free California workplace violence prevention checklist helps you identify all of the steps you need to take to keep your employees safe, and comply with California’s new workplace violence prevention law.   

Update Your Initial Safety Hazard Assessment

One of the biggest challenges for employers when developing your initial workplace violence prevention program is to determine the specific safety hazards your employees face through their work. But, unless your employees have already experienced workplace violence, in which case you could use the data developed as a result of that violent incident, trying to figure out the specific safety hazards requires developing the information elsewhere.

As you assess your workplace violence prevention plan for effectiveness look at how you determined your employees’ specific safety hazards. Did you interview employees or at least use employee surveys to identify the specific safety hazards?

If you didn’t take that approach, what approach did you use? 

The key to revisiting this fundamental element of workplace violence prevention, is to make certain that you tailored your research based upon the four different source types of workplace violence, and those source types that are most likely to impact your employees.

And to look at it based upon where your employees perform their work, at the workplace itself, at a job site, or at a client’s home or place of work, and who are the people they encounter while doing that work.

Finally, as part of your review, determine if there are any new safety hazards that your employees face, that you did not identify when you initially conducted your safety assessment.

Now update the safety hazards assessment section of your plan. There will be a ripple effect from any updates that you conduct in terms of identifying remediation approaches, and the need to train your employees on those specific safety hazards.

Employee Involvement

California required the active involvement of your employees in developing and implementing your workplace violence prevention plan and program, and in determining the types of training to provide your employees.

And that’s good, while some employers have performed the work their employees are now doing, other employers haven’t, and are not as familiar with the different types of safety hazards that their employees face on the job.

The employee involvement requirement is unusual in terms of addressing workplace issues. Most other employment related issues, such as sexual harassment, are addressed by a “thou shall not” approach, that is typically based upon state or federal law that prohibits that time of conduct.

While the “thou shall not” approach is somewhat relevant to co-worker sourced workplace violence, violence that originates from the three other source types of workplace violence, community violence, invitee violence, and domestic violence, can’t be addressed by a policy prohibiting certain behaviors.

And the best way to address the safety hazards from the other three source types of workplace violence is from your employees who deal with them day in and day out.

Employee involvement is required not just for identifying violence safety hazards, but also for identifying ways to remediate those hazards. And then in deciding the best approaches to take to train employees in recognizing and avoiding those hazards.

So as you revisit your violence prevention program for 2025, take a look at the approaches you used to ensure the active participation of your employees. 

And look for ways that you can expand that level of input. When it comes to employee involvement, the more the better.

Complaint and Investigation Practices

When it comes to preventing co-worker sourced workplace violence, there is no better approach to preventing it than having an effective complaint and investigation process. However, a process is only as good as its implementation.

So as you review your workplace violence prevention plan and program in preparation for 2025, assess the complaint and investigation process you’ve put together.

Is your complaint process standardized? Does it work the same for each and every employee? Or is it supervisor and manager dependent? In which case personalities and different supervision styles can come into play and impact the way the complaint is handled.

What type of investigation is conducted when a complaint is brought forward? Is there a procedure to protect against conflict of interests? This is really important since complaints of abusive conduct can concern managers and supervisors, and not just employees.

Are investigations conducted follow a standardized process that follows specific steps? Or are the ways investigation are conducted left up to the person assigned to conduct the investigation?

Do you feel confident that the people that are assigned to conduct investigations have the necessary skills in conducting interviews and in assessing the information developed during an investigation? If not, have you gotten training for them?

The single most important element to making your complaint and investigation process effective is clarity. Every employee must know how to bring the complaint, who to bring it to, and what information must be included when bringing the complaint.

And every investigation must have clearly defined steps to follow in order to develop the most accurate information so that decision makers have the tools they need to make the best decisions. 

Training

California requires that you provide training to your employees annually in recognizing the safety hazards they face, the approaches to remedy those hazards, and in strategies to avoid physical harm from workplace violence.

As you review your workplace violence prevention program, take a look at whether the training you provide sufficiently addresses the specific safety hazards your employees face. And remember that employees doing different types of work may face different safety hazards.

When it comes to training employees in remediation approaches, have you provided clear cut processes for them to implement? And have you taken your employees through the specific steps they need to follow in order to lessen their safety risks?

Role playing, and active Q and A sessions work better for training than simply handing out checklists. Checklists are never handy when they’re needed. Further, checklists imply that everything happens in linear fashion, when there is nothing linear about workplace violence.

If you’ve implemented new visitor practices, make sure that each person knows exactly what to do when a visitor arrives including those that arrive unannounced.

Training that is enjoyable with active participation, and team building, is much more likely to be turned into automatic action by your employees when needed. The worst thing for effective workplace violence prevention is to use a fear based training approach. In fact, such training leads to fear of taking action rather than embracing action.

When it comes to training employees in strategies to avoid physical harm from workplace violence, take a look at what trainings you’ve provided to your employees. Will the training you’ve done actually keep them from being physically harmed if violence happens?

Training should mirror the source types of safety threats. So if community violence is the biggest source of workplace violence hazards, than tailor your training to address avoiding physical harm from that source type of violence.

There are many different situations and even locations where violence can erupt, are the trainings you are providing addressing the different situations and locations.

There may be training that you did in 2024, that is worth repeating again in 2025 in order to reinforce it, or it may be that your employees will be able to avoid physical harm better if they are provided with different types of training.

And remember, that employee input matters. So ask your employees what training they feel will be most beneficial for them to avoid physical harm from violence.

It’s a new year. And time to think about how you’ll comply with California’s annual workplace violence employee training requirements, including in strategies to avoid physical harm from workplace violence. Keeping your employees safe from violence requires understanding how violence occurs, and how to prevent it. I can help you keep your employees safer, and comply with California’s new workplace violence prevention law. Schedule your free consultation. Together we’ll review where you are at, and what approach to take to achieve your goals. 

Here's to a safe and happy new year for you, your employees, and your organization!