Effective Workplace Violence Prevention Mindset

When it’s done effectively, workplace violence prevention creates a safer work environment for your employees, and protects your organization’s operation from the harmful and lasting effects that result from even a single incident of workplace violence.

And that’s a win-win. But to make your workplace violence prevention program effective, you’ll need to have clarity on your goals.

I say this because while complying with the first mandatory workplace violence prevention law is important, compliance shouldn't be your solo goal. It shouldn't even be your main goal.

Don’t get me wrong, I fully support the new law, I think every state should follow in California’s footsteps.

California’s new law has already accomplished something significant. As many employers, who previously gave no thought to workplace violence prevention, have focused on it, and as a result have become more aware of the causes of workplace violence.

And that is great news for both employees and employers.

Employees who feel that their employer cares about their safety, work better as a team, are more motivated and productive at work, and have lower absenteeism and turnover rates. Taken together these benefits lead to a more efficient operation, and to a healthy bottom line.

 In this piece, we’ll look at how to ensure that your workplace violence prevention program is effective, you’ll need to clearly identifying your purpose behind your violence prevention program, and align that purpose with your end goals.

Complying with the new law is a great start 

Doing so, can help you avoid some hefty fines from Cal/OSHA. Maximum fines, even for something as basic as not having your paperwork in order, are up to $15,873. And the maximum fines for willful and repeat violations are 10xs that amount, $158,727. But even one serious incident of workplace violence can cost an employer up to $25,000.

But, if you are serious about keeping your employees safe at work, you’ll need to do much more. 

I know this to be true from my 30+ years of investigating violence, and seeing up close, the long lasting physical and emotional trauma it causes. Working on case after case,I learned how violence, and its devastating aftermath, can be prevented with the right focus.

I’ve put together a workplace violence prevention checklist for California employers that covers the steps needed to establish and implement an effective workplace violence prevention program.         

Know Your Why

Regardless of the nature of your work, knowing your why is critical to your success. Identifying your sense of purpose for doing what you do helps you to define your strategy, and make your work more effective.

If you can’t articulate your core reasons and motivations for doing what you do, or what is often referred to as clarity of purpose, your heart won’t be in it. You may still be able to get the work done, but it will look and feel a bit like going through the motions.

Workplace violence prevention programs work the same way. Your reasons behind creating your violence prevention program help determine the effectiveness of your program.

If the main motivation, or the why is because there’s now a law, there’s a risk that your approach will be focused more on checking the boxes identified within the law, than on implementing approaches that improve your employees’ safety.

Employees can sense when their employer takes effective actions to safeguard them. That feels to them like you have their back. And conversely, when it feels to them that their employer is just covering the bases because it’s required to do so.

Learn From Your Employees What They Feel They Need to Be Safe

Effective workplace violence prevention is about understanding the unique safety hazards that your employees face because of the work they do for you. 

The workplace violence prevention process offers an incredible opportunity to engage with your employees, to understand their concerns, and to show unequivocally that you care. It’s also offers an unparalleled way to team build. 

That’s why the cornerstone to developing an effective workplace violence prevention program is employee involvement throughout the entire process.

Employees that feel heard will go the extra mile for their employers. That not only helps your violence prevention program become more effective, but it builds loyalty and trust with your employees.

It sure works better than team building exercises. Though if you want a great team building exercise, employees love learning self-defense together. Not only does self-defense keep your team safer, but spending some time having fun as they learn simple self-defense creates a pretty powerful bond.

Employers and employees are used to a top down approach to workplace matters. Employers prohibit employees from engaging in certain kinds of actions, such as discrimination, or sex harassment, and if an employee engages in that type of behavior, they can be disciplined or fired.

Workplace violence prevention doesn’t work the same way. In fact, 3 of the 4 source types of workplace violence that your employees face, involve someone other than co-workers.

For most employees, their biggest safety risk comes from invitees, such as clients, customers, patients, and family members of those people. For female employees, domestic violence spilling over into the workplace causes about 25% of the violence directed at them in the workplace. Community levels of crime and violence vary by location, and the amount of work that your employees do within the community. But, in this day and age, that’s another significant threat to your employees’ safety that’s unrelated to their co-workers.

In addition, employers don’t necessarily know the ins and outs of the work that each employee performs. And as a result, they don’t know off-hand the specific safety hazards their employees face.

And employees that do different types of work within the same organization, can face different types of safety hazards.

So, the best way to truly understand the safety threats your employees face, is to ask them. Learn from them. Engage with them. Don’t just assume you know the risks you face.

Once you’ve identified those specific safety hazards. You can take that information and devise an approach to address those safety hazards, and then with your employees’ assistance, you can implement those changes.

Implementation Matters

Information is neither good nor bad. It is simply a tool. And a powerful one at that. When properly used, information can lead to positive change. Especially when it comes to employee safety.

But that positive change only happens if that information leads to the implementation of improved processes and effective employee training on minimizing safety hazards.

Implementation is necessary to take a policy that exists on paper, and convert it into an effective program, one that makes your employees safer in their day-to-day work world.

Implementation requires good communication between management and employees. It requires taking the information you learned through employee input, and then determining approaches to address their safety concerns.

And then using your employees guidance to determine the best way to do so.

Your employees will be the ones that have to adapt those new approaches to their work, and that’s why employee involvement in this stage is critical. Asking them what will work better is the way to go.

You’ll also need your employees input, as you decide on the types of training to provide your employees.

They’ll need to be able understand the safety hazards they face, and how to avoid physical harm from those safety threats.

Tailoring Strategies to Avoid Physical Harm to Employees’ Safety Concerns 

One of the most challenging aspects of creating an effective workplace violence prevention program, is determining which strategies to train your employees in so that they can avoid physical harm from violence.

The challenge comes from the fact that the best people to determine what types of training they need to avoid physical harm are your employees. And yet, employees and employers don’t always see eye to eye on what those strategies should be.

Employees see training through the lens of safety. Employers may see training through the lens of business, logistics and scheduling, costs, and insurance.

And that’s certainly understandable. Though in the end prioritizing those concerns over employee safety concerns won’t make your program effective.

Here’s how that difference in perspective on training can manifest itself.

Employees, especially women, and those who arrive and depart during off work hours, or when it is dark out, often request training in parking lot safety. And that makes sense, especially since FBI statistics show parking lots and garages are some of the most common places where assaults and murders occur.

Employers on the other hand don’t regard parking lot safety as important because employees spend very little time there. Employers tend to want to focus on interpersonal skills to improve how co-workers engage with each other. And certainly those are valuable skills to develop in the workplace.

Both strategies can help to avoid physical harm from violence. But matching employee concerns to the strategies to avoid physical harm is what makes one violence prevention program more effective to helping employees avoid physical harm from violence than the other.

For employees, parking lot safety addresses safety hazards that arise from all four source types of workplace violence. Especially when it comes to community violence. Parking lots by their very nature provide a fixed place and time where an employee can consistently be encountered. This makes it easy for an invitee, a co-worker, or a former domestic partner to contact the employee at will.

Employers are right to want employees to learn skills like de-escalation. But, it’s only one level of training to avoid physical harm. But, what does your employee do to avoid physical harm if de-escalation fails? 

To make your violence prevention program more effective, you’ll need to go beyond the most basic approach, and provide your employees with contingency strategies should de-escalation fail.

Many employees want self-defense training as a contingency should other strategies fail. It’s the only way to avoid physical harm once other approaches have failed. But many employers resist that type of training. Sometimes that’s because of insurance concerns, and sometimes that’s due to a lack of understanding about self-defense.

But, when employees feel some type of self-defense is an important fall back strategy to avoid being harmed, employers should seriously consider training employees in self-defense if their employees ask for it,  as a way to ensure you’ve implemented an effective violence prevention program.

Want to discuss implementing your workplace violence prevention plan including providing effective training that specifically addresses your employees' unique safety hazards. Send me an email at [email protected] and we’ll set up some time to discuss your workplace violence prevention needs.