Active Shooter Training is a Myth. Here's What Really Works to Keep Your Staff Safe From Workplace Violence.

Just before Thanksgiving, a night manager at a Walmart store in Virginia, walked into the break room, and opened fire on his co-workers, slaughtering six and wounding six more, before taking his own life.

Walmart, like many employers, provided active shooter training to its staff at that store in the belief that it would keep them safe. It didn’t.

The conventional wisdom that active shooter training is effective at keeping employees safe is wrong. In fact. Active shooter training is a myth. Its failure to address the entirety of workplace violence leaves staff more vulnerable to violence not less.

During my 30+ years of working as an investigator, I investigated many shootings and other incidents of workplace violence.  I’ve also spent over 10 years teaching personal safety, self-defense, and even investigation skills to individuals, businesses, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies to help them keep their staff safe.

Based upon my experiences here’s what every organization serious about staff safety should know.

Workplace Violence is Real and Pervasive.

According to the federal government, each year, almost 2,000,000 Americans report being a victim of workplace violence. Likely, the actual number of workplace violence victims is even greater since many instances go unreported. And despite the public perception that violence happens at only certain types of industry workplaces, it can happen at pretty much any type of workplace.

In 2021, Zogby Analytics conducted a survey of 405 business representatives from a diverse array of industries, including technology services, manufacturing, professional, legal, and financial services, restaurants, retail, construction, non-profits, and other industries regarding violence in the workplace. 

The survey found:

•  34% of small and mid-sized businesses reported experiencing at least one serious employee threat of violence or an actual violent incident. 
•  91% of those surveyed believed violence can happen in any industry. 
•  34% of the companies reported that their employees expressed fear of workplace violence, concerns about workplace security, or feeling threatened by customers, co-workers, visitors, or members of the public.       

Zogby’s survey found that episodes of workplace violence caused lower employee morale, lower employee retention rates, decreased workplace productivity, lost sales and profits too. And organizations where workplace violence occurred suffered damage to their reputation as a result of the violence that lasted for many months.

Despite its widespread use, active shooter training is not the best way to help your staff feel safer while at work, and while out in the community too. 

Active Shooter Training is Reactive and Wrongly Focused. And It puts the Onus for Safety on the Individual Instead of On the Organization Where It Belongs.

Active shooter training focuses on each individual’s actions while a mass violence incident is underway. Run, hide, engage is the mantra of active shooter training, meaning when the shooting starts, run if you can, hide if you can’t run, and engage with the attacker if you can’t run or hide.

Since the shooting has already started, pretty much all you can do is run or hide until the shooting stops. Workplace, and school shootings typically end when a shooter takes his own life, his weapon fails, or he flees  the scene. 

And that works…as long as you are lucky. 

Some active shooter trainings go all in on trying to recreate the feel of an attack, using props like flashing lights, loud noises, and smoke. But, it’s not the physical environment that matters when it comes to engagement with an armed attacker. It’s what’s inside you, and whether you’ve learned to pattern movement and action that matters. 

Myth #1: One and done training works: 

Think about it. Law enforcement officers attend about three months of academy training plus refreshers. Yet, even these armed and trained professionals sometimes refrain from engaging with the shooter when arriving on scene. 

Yet, many employers believe that a one time training, especially with smoke and mirrors—flashing lights, and loud noise—helps novices do what trained pros don’t.

We need to be clear about something: It many active shooter situations survival comes down to sheer luck. And, your chances of survival greatly increase if you are lucky enough to not directly encounter the shooter at the time he that he is shooting.

Employers need to think about workplace violence like they do about other workplace safety concerns. Addressing it requires planning, providing staff with the safety training in such a way that staff can summon it automatically, and it requires improving internal communications to stop or prevent violence.

Myth #2: Active Shooter Training Compensates for Weak or Nonexistent Internal Complaint, Investigation, and Resolution Processes:

Live shooter training makes employers feel good. The simple act of providing the training foists the responsibility for safety onto the staff. We told them to run, hide, and engage. But, it’s up to them to actually do so.

And if workplace violence occurred only in a vacuum, this might be ok.

But, after almost any incident of workplace violence occurs. Information filters out to the public that the employer, had been warned either about the behavior of the employee that engages in violence, about a culture of bullying that the employee himself reported or staff alerted the employer about physical security issues, and breaches, that caused concerns when dealing with the public, customers, and vendors.

Sadly, those warnings went unaddressed leading to violence and death. In litigation, we call this prior notice. And with enough prior notice, an employer can be sued for a level of deliberate indifference that opens the door to civil litigation.

Employers see active shooter training as a panacea. It’s not. And it doesn’t overcome an employer’s responsibility of having a solid complaint and investigation process in place. One that unearths, investigates, and remedies problems before they lead to violence.

So what approach can an employer take to reducing the risk of a workplace violence incident that take the luck factor out of surviving workplace violence.

Myth #3: Workplace Violence is Different From Other Types of Violence

Live shooter trainings treat workplace violence as a separate category of violence. That somehow the violence that occurs in the workplace is somehow different from that which occurs in the community.

But in fact community based violence is no different. For women, the largest cause of workplace shootings is domestic violence that spills over into the workplace. Why at the workplace and not somewhere else? Because the attacker knows that’s where she’ll be since she has to make a living.

Further, grievance based violence, where people lash out believing they’ve been wronged, and that they have the right to address the perceived slight through violence, drives community based violence as well.

And, when someone walks in off the street and starts shooting staff and customers at a grocery store, the shooter is there because there are people there. 

If Active Shooter Training Isn’t Effective at Keeping Your Staff Safe. What Can an Organization Do Instead?

Reducing workplace violence is a multipart process. 

Teaching your staff the skills of de-escalation, situational awareness, changing the dynamics of an attack, and self-defense help them develop the tools to keep themselves safe.

Situational awareness training allows your staff to recognize a risk to physical safety, and to avoid it.

De-escalation training allows your staff to defuse a tense situation before it can spiral out of control.

Changing the dynamics of an attack training allows your staff to survive the initial onslaught of any type of attack, and to force the attacker out of his game plan. 

Self-defense training allows your staff to quickly and safely stop an unarmed or armed attack.

In addition, employers can help keep their staff safe while at work and out in the community by developing physical security processes, including parking lot safety, adjusting work space layouts to maximize safety, and implementing internal communication mechanisms.

And, finally, having an effective complaint and investigation process in place, also goes a long ways to helping to defuse some of the problems that lead to an outburst of violence.  A process that instills confidence in your staff that their complaints will be investigated and addressed rather than dismissed out of hand, goes a long ways towards a safe workplace.

Active shooter training is a myth. It’s far too late into the process when running and hiding thanks to sheer luck, and trying to buy time until an attacker kills himself or his weapon jams, is really not a strategy.

Would you like to learn more about how you can enhance workplace safety. Checkout this free workplace safety checklist with steps you can take to reduce the risk of workplace violence.