Effective Workplace Violence Prevention

California requires that, “an employer shall establish, implement, and maintain an effective workplace violence prevention plan.” 

When it comes to employee safety from workplace violence, effectiveness matters. Simply put, you can’t undo the devastating harm that violence causes to employees and to an organization. 

After an act of workplace violence occurs. The damage is done. And with lasting effects.

That’s why California put its focus on violence prevention. And getting prevention right means making sure that your violence prevention program is effective. 

So how can you ensure that your approach to workplace violence prevention is effective? 

In this piece, we’ll look at California’s requirements that your workplace violence prevention program be effective.  And will look at ways to assess the effectiveness of your current workplace violence prevention approach.

Still in the process of putting together your workplace violence prevention program required under California’s new workplace violence prevention law? My free CA workplace violence prevention checklist can help. 

California’s Effectiveness Requirements

Except for some very limited exceptions, California’s workplace violence prevention law applies to “all employers, employees, places of employment.” And California, in its law, requires that employers not just create a workplace violence prevention plan, but for that plan to be effective. 

In fact, California uses the word “effective” eight times in its workplace violence prevention law.

In doing so, California requires employers to go well beyond a set it and forget approach to having a workplace violence prevention plan. Your workplace violence prevention plan is not to be treated as a static document, but one that needs to be continuously evaluated and updated.

How do I know this? It says so right in the law.

Employers must have “procedures to review the effectiveness of the plan and revise as needed.”

Here are the ways California, in its workplace violence prevention law, requires your prevention plan to be effective:

•  Effective procedures to obtain the active involvement of employees in developing and implementing the plan, including in identifying, evaluating, and correcting workplace violence hazards, in designing and implementing training, and in reporting and investigating workplace violence incidents.
•  Effective procedures for the employer to accept and respond to reports of workplace violence, and to prohibit retaliation against an employee who makes such a report.
•  Effective procedures to ensure that supervisory and nonsupervisory employees comply with the plan.
•  Effective procedures to communicate with employees regarding workplace violence matters.
•  Effective procedures to respond to actual or potential workplace violence emergencies. Including having effective approaches in: ways to alert employees to a workplace violence emergency; evacuation and sheltering plans; how to obtain help from staff assigned to respond to workplace violence emergencies; identify and evaluate workplace violence hazards; procedures to correct workplace violence hazards; procedures for post incident response and investigation.
•  Provide effective training to employees in: the employer’s violence prevention plan; how to report violence incidents and concerns for safety; the workplace violence prevention hazards  specific to the employees’ jobs, corrective measures the employer has implemented, how to seek assistance to prevent or respond to violence, and training employees in strategies to avoid physical harm from violence.

Assessing the Effectiveness of Your Workplace Violence Prevention Program

Assessing the effectiveness of your workplace violence prevention program requires examining how you developed your prevention plan, what safety systems you have put in place, and the trainings you provide to employees. Here’s how to assess the effectiveness of your workplace violence prevention program.

•  Look at the extent of involvement, and the role your employees played in identifying the workplace hazards they face, the approaches they identified to remedy those safety threats, and the types of trainings they requested, especially when it comes to strategies to avoid physical harm from workplace violence. The more employee involvement, the more effective your workplace violence prevention program will be. It should be driven by your employees experiences, observations, and input.
•  Next look at your approach to the complaint and investigation process for workplace violence incidents, and situations that can escalate into violence. The more standardized the complaint and investigation approach that you implement, the more effective it will be. The goal with a complaint and investigation process is to get to an honest assessment of what is occurring. Avoid approaches that allow for personalities, and favoritism to be factors in how a complaint is handled. 
•  Assess the types of process improvements you’ve implemented based upon your employee input. These can be anything from ways that an employee communicates a workplace violence safety concern, to developing specific visitor processes, to developing a buddy system for parking lot safety hazards. The more clarity you provide to employees with the different processes you implement and refine, the more effective your workplace violence prevention program will be.
•  Assess the different trainings you provide to employees. Are you matching the trainings to the types of safety hazards they face? Are you providing them with the right skills, and no-how, to avoid being physically harmed while working? The better your employees understand how to recognize the specific safety threats they face, and the more knowledgable they are about what to do when they encounter those safety hazards, the more effective they’ll be at avoiding physical harm. The more effective your program will be at keeping employees safer.

Learn more about training your employees in strategies to avoid physical harm that will help to  keep them safe from community violence or by visiting my website www.mikecorwin.com.