4 Ways Workplace Violence Prevention is More Challenging

I’m a facts person. Information typically provides guidance. So I’m a little perplexed. 

Over the course of four years, from FY2018-FY2021, the US EEOC received 27,291 complaints of sexual harassment in the workplace. These figures included the peak years of the “#MeToo” movement. Over an 8 year period of time, from 2014-2021, the US EEOC received, on average, about 6,800 sexual harassment complaints per year.

I worked on many sexual harassment investigations, and instances of sexual harassment can be quite harmful to those who are victimized by it. 17 states have mandated that employers prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. And most employers do so.

In contrast, each year, OSHA receives almost 2,000,000 workplace violence complaints. Over that same four year period of time, OSHA received nearly 8,000,000 complaints of workplace violence. 

Yet, California is the only state that requires employers to have an effective workplace violence prevention program. Maybe California understands something that other states do not. 

Preventing workplace violence requires more engagement than does preventing sexual harassment, or any other type of workplace misconduct. And, reflecting this reality, California’s violence prevention law requires employers to do much more to implement an effective workplace violence prevention program than is typically required for other types of workplace issues including:

•  Understanding the different source types for workplace violence, and the different ways each source type can impact your employees’ safety.
•  Involving employees in every aspect of the process of developing and implementing a prevention program.
•  Conducting assessments to determine the specific safety hazards that your employees face. And implementing corrective measures based upon the results of those assessments.
•  Training your employees in strategies to avoid physical harm from workplace violence.

California requires employers to “establish, implement, and maintain an effective workplace violence prevention plan.” But knowing how to effectively protect your employees from violence, requires small and midsized employers, to understand violence, and the ways that it can happen to your employees. 

And that’s a real challenge for those of you who haven’t experienced violence first hand. How do you know what works to prevent violence against your employees, when you’re unfamiliar with violence?

I spent 30 years investigating violence in the workplace and in the community. I saw firsthand how violence happens and the ways it can be prevented. And because my work often took place within some pretty dangerous locations, I learned to keep myself safe from violence in order to do my work safely and effectively. 

For over ten years, I’ve helped people, from a wide variety of industries, keep safe while doing the work they love, including the staff of a United States Senator, judges, court administrators and staff, educators, religious institutions, law firms, medical professionals, restaurant managers, construction workers, and manufacturing companies.

I’ve created a workplace violence prevention checklist to help California employers who aren’t familiar with the nature of violence and how it happens, develop a workplace violence prevention plan, that keeps employees safer while meeting California’s requirements.    

Workplace Violence Derives from Sources Outside of an Employer’s Control

Workplace violence is more challenging to prevent than other types of workplace incidents as there are four source types for workplace violence, two of which do not fall under an employer’s control.

Employers have to help protect employees from:  

•  Community crime and violence. 
•  Invitee violence- clients, customers, patients, and their families, as well as contractors, vendors and sales people. 
•  Co-worker violence. 
•  People connected to your employees from outside of their work, including current and former intimate partners and family members.

And, of these four source types, employers do not have direct control over community members and family members of employees. And employers have only limited control over the actions of invitees.

Sexual harassment and other workplace issues are primarily caused by co-workers, and occasionally from invitees. Because there are only two source types for other types of workplace incidents employers have more direct control over those involved making it easier to prevent than workplace violence.

To prevent the potential of workplace violence from all four source types of workplace violence, employers must have an understanding of the potential for community level violence, family related violence, and invitee violence in addition to the easier to prevent co-worker violence. And how the violence from each of the source types can manifest themselves towards your employees. 

Workplace Violence Prevention Requires Extensive Employee Input involvement

When developing an effective workplace violence prevention program employers must actively involve their employees in almost all aspects of the process. California’s workplace violence prevention law requires it.

Employers must identify, “effective procedures to obtain the active involvement of employees, and authorized employee representatives in developing and implementing the plan, including but not limited to, through their participation in identifying, evaluating, and correcting workplace violence hazards, in designing and implementing training.” 

Employee involvement is what makes your workplace violence prevention program effective against the specific workplace violence safety hazards your employees face. It’s also a labor intensive process, that requires a variety of skills to do properly.

For most other types of workplace issues employers typically employ a top down directive approach with little to no employee input into the process. I call this the “though shall not” approach. Employers identify conduct that is not permitted, convey that the conduct is prohibited, and then instruct employees on what they need to do if they are exposed to that type of conduct.

Those policies are often written by legal counsel, or human resources. No one needs to interview or survey employees in order to determine what needs to be addressed. These types of prevention approaches tend to be based upon the language of workplace related statutes. And employers determine what type of training to provide, and how to deliver that training to employees.

Because employers must get employee input in developing and implementing an effective workplace violence prevention program, a top down directive will not meet California’s requirements. 

But, the extra work needed to get their input, makes sense since your employees have the most knowledge concerning the safety threats they face, and they are the ones most likely to be victimized by violence.

Assessing and Correcting Workplace Violence Safety Risks

Conducting assessments to determine the specific safety hazards that your employees face, and then using the information learned through those assessments to develop approaches to eliminate those safety hazards, is the backbone of an effective workplace violence prevention program.

Though, it’s not a process that many employers know how to perform.

Doing the assessments requires that employers have a solid understanding of violence, and the ways that violence happens from the four different source types of workplace violence, as well as which of those source types are most likely to threaten your employees based upon  the specific nature of the work that your employees perform. 

This is especially challenging as not only does it require involvement by employees, but it also requires studying the work your employees do, how they do their work, who they interact with while doing their work, the types of threats they’ve previously experienced, near misses or close calls that could have turned violent but did not, and then synthesizing that information and using it to identify specific safety risks.

Then once you’ve identified the workplace violence safety risks your employees face, you have to identify approaches involving staffing, and work practices, that need to be changed in ways that will reduce those safety risks.

When it comes to other types of workplace issues that are addressed by “though shall not” directives. There is no assessment of work practices to do, or corrections to work practices to identify and implement. Employers don’t need to devote time or resources to figuring out where risks are.

Training Employees in Strategies to Avoid Physical Harm from Workplace Violence

As part of workplace violence prevention, your employees are required to be trained in the knowledge and skills that can keep them from being physically when faced with likely violence. 

There’s absolutely no doubt that an employee being subjected to offensive words or displays due to their race, gender, age, religion etc. can leave deep scars on that employee. Words sting, and feeling isolated can be scary.

But, a physical attack causes your employees to can suffer from emotional trauma and physical trauma. Both sources of trauma can result from being sexually assaulted, beaten, or even killed. A physical attack can require medical treatment, including having to go to the emergency room.

And California’s workplace violence prevention law requires that employees be trained in strategies to avoid physical harm from workplace violence. To do that effectively, employers need to know what types of strategies work in different types of situations, and then to train them in how to avoid being harmed.

And employers need to get input from employees on the types of trainings that will help them avoid physical harm. There are a myriad of approaches so employers, in order to determine the best strategies and training, will need to understand the nature of violence, and the potential for physical harm. And based upon that knowledge, will need to identify the best strategies and training for their employees.

While de-escalation training can benefit any employee, facing any type of workplace incident, most other types of workplace incidents don’t require training beyond de-escalation because physical harm is not part of the risk to their safety.

Having to make a judgment call about what your employees need to know in order to protect their physical safety is not something most employers know about.

Workplace violence prevention is more difficult than preventing other workplace issues. It requires an understanding of violence, how it happens, and what steps are effective in preventing it. Here’s my 3-step approach:

•  I begin by identifying and assessing the specific safety hazards that your employees face, including how work practices may expose employees to those safety hazards. 
•  I then develop approaches to remediate those safety hazards, and train your employees in those approaches. 
•  I then train employees in strategies to avoid physical harm from the four source types of workplace violence, as well as train employees and incident response teams in what to do should a workplace violence emergency occur.

Send me an email at [email protected] and we’ll schedule a free 15 minute consultation to discuss your workplace violence prevention needs.