The Key to Employee Safety from Violence

California has one of the highest incidents in the nation of non-fatal workplace violence assaults significant enough to cause employees to miss workdays. As the nation’s most populous state, that’s not a surprise.

California, to its credit, is trying to address that through the requirements in its new workplace violence prevention law.

And that’s good because once employers understand what to do, they can reduce the number of non-fatal assaults in the workplace, thereby reducing workplace disruptions while building a stronger sense of community. 

The key to achieving this goal is through training employees in strategies to avoid physical harm. Which, not coincidentally, is one of the requirements within the law.

Why is training your employees in strategies to avoid physical harm from violence so critical to their safety?

Because the majority of workplace violence assaults are committed by people not under an employer’s control. And you can’t prevent those assaults through policies or disciplinary action in the way that you can with co-worker violence.

Providing your employees with relevant skills not only helps them to be safer from any source type of workplace violence, but doing so also complies with California’s new workplace violence prevention law; thus, reducing the risk of a fine for noncompliance from CAL/OSHA. 

A win-win-win.

I learned a lot about what does and doesn’t work to prevent violence during the 30 plus years that I conducted investigations into workplace and community violence. And that information guides the way that I work with small to mid-sized employers to help them prevent workplace violence. 

California’s new workplace violence prevention law sent a lot of employers into uncharted waters, as most employers aren’t familiar enough with violence to know how to prevent it. My California Employers Workplace Violence Prevention Checklist helps you take the guesswork out of creating a workplace violence prevention plan that protects your employees and complies with California’s new law.  

The Unique Safety Role of Strategies to Avoid Physical Harm  

Training your employees in strategies to avoid physical harm plays a unique role in workplace violence prevention. Literally it is what will keep them from being physically harmed as they do their work regardless of the type of work setting.

Training employees in strategies to avoid physical harm gives them the tools to keep safe at any point along the violence continuum, including from any of the different source types of violence. 

Here’s why it is the most important element of your workplace violence prevention program. Violence is unpredictable. It doesn’t follow a set progression. Violence can be random or targeted. It can happen suddenly without warning or it can be premeditated.

The unpredictable nature of violence means that for your employees to be safe from violence, they need to be prepared to deal with any form it takes, and from any of the four source types.  

The Strategies Best Suited to Your Employees 

Determining the most valuable strategies to train your employees in requires understanding the work they do and the safety threats they face as a result of that work.  

And then matching the strategies that are most effective in addressing those safety threats. California again got this right in the new law. Specificity matters. Trying a one-sized fits all approach just is not nearly as effective as an approach that’s specific to your employees work environment. 

And that is best done through the assessment process you follow during the creation of your prevention program. And doing that effectively requires getting your employees’ input. They have the clearest understanding of the safety threats they face. 

Plus, California requires that you have the active involvement of your employees in the assessment process, and in determining the types of workplace violence prevention training to provide to them. 

Examine the source types of the violence threats they face, and of the locations where they work. And then using that information, look at ways that violence can develop within those situations. 

What Conventional Wisdom Gets Wrong about Strategies to Avoid Physical Harm

Employees that I work with often bring up their own experiences with violence. And most of those who were attacked report being attacked without warning.  

Most attackers rely upon the element of surprise. They just launch right into an attack without threatening violence first. 

They do so to catch you off guard. And their goal is to get you on the ground as quickly as possible where you are even more vulnerable. Being on the ground restricts your ability to move to the point where it’s like dealing with an additional attacker. 

Can you de-escalate this type of attack before it happens? No. You can’t. 

Sorry to burst that bubble. De-escalation requires time. In most situations where there is a non-fatal assault, there simply isn’t the time to even try to de-escalate.

But, when it comes to conventional wisdom about training employees in strategies to avoid physical harm, you wouldn’t know that.

Conventional wisdom treats de-escalation as the holy grail of strategies to avoid physical harm. Those espousing that belief simply assume that there’s time prior to a physical attack to de-escalate. To talk that person down before he becomes violent. And that would be truly wonderful if that were the case.  

It just isn’t.  

For de-escalation to work, you need time. You need to understand why the person is angry so that you can address his anger. And that requires enough time to listen to the person, to demonstrate that you are actually hearing what’s said, and to be able to ask questions, in order to get him to listen to you and redirect him away from his anger.  

It’s that redirection that de-escalates the situation. 

De-escalation training definitely has its place in your strategies to avoid harm from workplace violence. Especially when it comes to co-worker violence, and to a lesser extent, invitee violence.

But, the key thing to remember is that it’s just one strategy of many, and that there’s a pretty good chance you may not have a chance to even try it. 

The If-Then Approach 

Because there are so many ways that a situation can turn violent, I prefer the if-then approach to strategies to avoid physical harm.

The in-then approach is simply matching the strategy to avoid physical harm to the specific situation you’re facing.

For example, implementing situational awareness allows your employee to recognize, in advance, a potential violence threat, and by doing so far enough in advance to avoid that threat, and the physical harm that threat might pose.

And that works best when your employee has the time to spot a safety threat early, and far enough away from your employee, to physically avoid it. It’s too late to implement that approach is the safety threat is standing right in front of your employee. 

Another strategy, changing the dynamics of an attack, works at the very onset of an attack. The point past where de-escalation might be able to work. 

Changing the dynamics of an attack involves taking away an attacker’s initial advantage that comes from his launching a sneak attack. But, because of the nature of violence, there is a very small window in which there is time for that strategy to work.

Some strategies, such as keeping employees safe from violence in a parking lot or parking garage, are actually a combination of multiple strategies that can be used depending upon the circumstances as they unfold. 

Having multiple options in place, makes your employees’ ability to avoid physical harm much more likely.

Complying with California law and keeping your employees safer means not just creating  a prevention plan, but implementing, and maintaining it too. My book the California Workplace Violence Prevention Manual can help you do that.  Check it out here.

 Ready to explore your options on complying with California’s new workplace violence prevention law requirements and keeping your staff safe from the trauma of workplace violence. Schedule your free consultation. We’ll discuss your specific workplace violence prevention needs and the most effective ways to address them.