Assessing employee safety risks without any prior incidents

California’s groundbreaking new workplace violence prevention law requires employers to develop a workplace violence prevention program that “is specific to the hazards” their employees face.

But, for employers, whose employees haven’t experienced any workplace violence, it can be challenging to figure out specific safety risks when they’re unseen.

So how do you prepare a workplace violence safety hazard assessment specific to your employees’ safety risks if your employees haven’t faced workplace violence?

In this post, I look at ways to assess safety risks to your employees when there are no prior incidents to serve as a reference.

California employers have to comply with the requirements of the new workplace violence prevention law by July 1, 2024. I’ve got a great tool to help you get the process started. It’s my free CA workplace violence prevention checklist. Download it here. 

Determining Safety Hazards With No Prior Incidents

While it can feel a bit like grasping at straws when trying to assess safety risks with no data, there are a couple of approaches you can take to determine the specific types of safety hazards your employees face when there is no prior history of workplace violence.

To be able to do this, you have to be forward thinking in your assessment process.

The first approach involves understanding the four source types of workplace violence, and which employees are most at risk from each type. You can then apply this information to your own employees.

The second approach involves the concept of the “near miss”. These are situations that happened to your employees, but didn’t quite reach the level of a safety hazard. With your employees’ help, you can identify near misses, and assess the circumstances behind the near misses to determine specific safety hazards.

Combining these two approaches can help determine the specific safety risks that employees face even though they’ve never been subjected to workplace violence.

Who is Most Effected by the Four Source Types of Workplace Violence

I’ve previously covered the four source types of workplace violence, ( for written material which you can find here, here, here, and here.) (Need links) and I put link to those in the description below (video).

To use the four source types of workplace violence to assess the specific risks your employees face, you’ll need to look at who is most impacted by each of the four source types of violence.

For example, Type 1 workplace violence that deals with violence related to criminal conduct, generally happens as part of a robbery, or to people whose work takes them into areas where there is a higher level of community violence.

Then, examine the nature of your employees work, and the environments where they work.

Based upon your assessment, do you feel they face a risk from either of those situations? If yes, then you’ll need to incorporate ways to reduce those specific workplace violence hazards into your prevention plan. 

If not. You can move on from there.

For Type 2 workplace violence that deals with violence from invitees, such as clients, customers, vendors, family and friends of clients, you can look at who your employees serve and interact with during their work day, as well as the environment where they work such as at a client’s home or business.

Based upon your assessment, identify if there’s a stress component involved in the work they do such as those involving social workers, attorneys, caregivers, or medical staff face. 

Identify who your employees interact with, and include if need be, the invitees family members. And Identify if they work in environments where your employees don’t have control over who is present while they are working there.

Once you’ve thought that through, you can decide if protecting your employees from this type of workplace violence needs to be included in your prevention plan.

Workplace violence source types 3 and 4 are a bit trickier. As they involve co-workers in Type 3, and employees’ personal lives outside of work in Type 4.

For Type 3, you need to examine your employee interactions at work including supervision, the types of personalities, and the environment. 

And for Type 4, you need to consider the dynamics of your employees’ off work life, family relations, and whether any issues outside work can spill over into the workplace.

Because there’s more conjecture involved in assessing Types 3 and 4, it may be best, as a precaution, to incorporate ways to address safety hazards from those source types of violence in your prevention planning.

Near Misses

Another helpful element is to use your employees’ experiences where situations occurred that could have devolved into safety threats, but in the end did not. 

These are known as near misses. 

Per OSHA, “A near-miss is a potential hazard or incident in which no property was damaged and no personal injury was sustained, but where, given a slight shift in time or position, damage or injury easily could have occurred.”

In other words, a close call. 

By surveying employees regarding experiences that included near misses, employers can get a better understanding of the types of situations that can pose a potential safety risk to your employees. And potentially identify ways to avoid those situations.

And, once you determine those potential risks, to include them in your prevention planning.

Employees can be asked open ended questions that are designed to elicit, not just that a situation occurred, but the entire circumstances surrounding the situation. This allows you to determine if a similar incident reasonably might occur that could become hazardous. 

The key to this strategy is to keep initial survey questions as open ended as possible, and then use additional questions to refine the information, until you identify enough information to help your assessment process.

Questions you can ask might include:

•  “Have you ever felt concerned about your safety while working?”
•  “What were the circumstances that led you to feel this way?”
•  “Why do you feel this situation didn’t lead to a threat to your safety?”
•  “Could this situation occur again? And how might that happen?”
•  “Under what circumstances might this situation have turned into a hazard to your safety?”

There are other approaches that an employer can do to determine potential safety hazards when your employees have not experienced workplace violence incidents. But, starting with these two approaches can help you overcome the challenge of creating a workplace violence prevention plan when it feels like your operating in a vacuum. 

Looking for a good place to start developing your required workplace violence prevention plan. Download my free CA workplace violence prevention checklist.   

 And don’t forget to check back for information on the workshop to help employers outline a workplace violence prevention plan that helps keep employees safer, and complies with California’s new workplace violence prevention law that goes into effect on on July 1, 2024.

Want to learn more about the upcoming workshop to help employers outline a workplace violence prevention plan that’s tailored to address your employees’ specific safety needs, and complies with California’s new workplace violence prevention law that goes into effect on on July 1, 2024. Email me at [email protected].