California Requires Active Involvement of Employees in Your Workplace Violence Prevention Process

Will a one-size-fits-all generic workplace violence prevention plan comply with California’s new groundbreaking workplace violence prevention law?

No. Absolutely not.

California requires employers to “establish, implement, and maintain” a prevention plan that is tailored to their employees’ unique work circumstances and safety hazards. 

And, to ensure that your program does that, California demands that you have the “active involvement” of employees at each stage of the creation process of your workplace violence prevention program.

In this post, I discuss California’s requirement for employee participation in the workplace violence prevention process. And how, in doing so, California also requires employers to customize your prevention program based upon your employees’ specific safety challenges.

As a result, no one-size-fits-all approach to creating your plan will satisfy California’s requirements.

Hi, I’m Mike Corwin. I help employers develop, implement, and maintain, workplace violence prevention plans that keep employees safer, and comply with California’s new workplace violence prevention law.

I spent 30 years conducting civil and criminal litigation investigations where I saw, first hand, the tragic consequences from violence. Through this work, I learned how violence happens and how it can be prevented.  And, in order to be effective at my work, I had to learn to keep myself safe, while working in some very dangerous places and environment.

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. 

And keep an eye out here, as I’ll soon be announcing dates for a 3-hour workshop to help California employers outline a workplace violence prevention plan that is specific to your employees’ safety needs, and complies with California’s new workplace violence prevention law.

California’s Requirements for Employee Active Participation

California is unequivocal in the role employees must take in “establishing, implementing, and maintaining” your workplace violence prevention program. Here’s what the law says about the involvement of employees in this process:

“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, and in reporting and investigating workplace violence incidents.”

 California also requires employers to “obtain the active involvement of employees and authorized employee representatives in reviewing the plan”, when assessing the effectiveness of a workplace violence prevention plan.

Compliance and Customization Start with Conducting an Employee Survey

When it comes to getting employee input in identifying, evaluating, and correcting workplace violence hazards, the very best way to accomplish that goal, and to develop the necessary specificity for developing your plan, is to conduct an employee survey.

The survey can be done in writing, or through conducting interviews, depending upon the number of employees. Regardless of the approach you take, confidentiality is critical to employees speaking freely.

You want the unvarnished information to be able to identify specific violence hazards, and to identify ways to correct those hazards.

And your employee survey should reflect the different types of positions within your work force. As different positions face different workplace violence hazards.

Some employees may have little interaction with the public, while others may work regularly within the community. Some employees may work with multiple co-workers, while others work alone. 

You’ll need to learn from them how those different positions can lead to different types of safety hazards.

In addition to helping you identify safety hazards, and ways to remediate those hazards, employees should be surveyed about the types of training that will be the most effective in helping them avoid physical harm from a potential workplace violence incident.

For some this might mean de-escalation training, for others training in communication strategies, and still others might need situational awareness and even self-defense training.

California requires employers to train employees in strategies to avoid physical harm that are specific to the types of safety threats they face.

Many employers already have a complaint and investigation process that is designed to address different types of work related matters. In requiring that employees have input into the complaint and investigation process, California recognizes that not every complaint and investigation process is viewed favorably by employees.

Employers can use the required input from employees to improve, or develop, a complaint and investigation process that instills confidence in employees, that they will be heard, and they will be treated fairly.

Ensuring an Effective Plan

 In addition to being tailored to your employees unique safety needs as identified by your employees, California also wants employers to ensure that employees get a final say in the violence prevention planning process.

As a result, California requires that employees be able to review the plan developed, and to weigh in on its effectiveness. And if need be, to point out specific processes that need to be revised in order to better ensure their safety.

The collaborative approach required by California helps to ensure that the workplace violence prevention plan adopted by an employer is both effective, and unique to your specific employees’ needs.

This process leads to a fully customized workplace violence prevention plan. No cut and paste, generic plan can meet these requirements.

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

Interested in learning 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. You can email me at [email protected].