The Secret Benefit In Creating a Violent Incident Log

California’s workplace violence prevention law requires employers to record information in a violent incident log for every workplace violence incident that happens to their employees.

So, should you go to the trouble of creating a violent incident log if your employees have never experienced workplace violence?

Yes. Here’s why. 

Creating a violent incident log can help you improve the effectiveness your workplace violence prevention program, and help you determine if you’re on the right track to maximize employee safety. Especially if your employees haven’t experienced workplace violence.

In this piece, I’ll look at California’s requirement for employers to create a violent incident log to document incidents of workplace violence. And how that requirement can help you improve the effectiveness of your workplace violence prevention program when your employees have not experienced workplace violence themselves. 

The additional benefit comes from using the creation process to game out different workplace violence scenarios. And, using that information to assess the ways those situations can happen to your employees, before your employees actually experience any violence. 

Thus, providing you with the kind of insights into violence, and its prevention, that typically only occurs after the fact. 

To effectively prevent workplace violence, employers must have an understanding of violence, the ways in which it can happen, and what does, and does not work, to prevent it. But most small and midsized employers don’t have the relevant experience with violence to develop this level of knowledge.

Take the guesswork out of knowing what types of trainings your employees need to be safe from violence, and to comply with California's new law. I spent 30 years investigating violence in the workplace and in the community. I saw firsthand how violence happens, and what it takes to prevent it. I worked in some pretty dangerous places, and as a result, had to learn how to keep myself safe from violence.

I’ve created a workplace violence prevention training checklist to help California employers unfamiliar with the nature of violence and the ways that it happens, to know exactly what types of training your need to provide to your employees, that will keep them safer while meeting California’s requirements. 

What is a Violent Incident Log 

A violent incident log is simply a form you use to compile actionable data about a violent incident that involves your employees. It’s where, you’ll document the specific information required by California in its workplace violence prevention law, describing in detail what happened leading up to and during a workplace violence incident. 

That necessary information includes the circumstances leading up to the incident, the workplace violence source type for the incident, the nature of the incident, factors that contributed to the incident, and steps you took to protect the employee from safety hazards that were identified as a result of the incident.

The Violent Incident Log as an Assessment Tool

One of the reasons that California requires employers to create a violent incident log is to so employers can use the information collected about a workplace violence incident to learn from it. By reviewing the details of an incident, you identify ways to keep your employees safe from a similar type of violence incident. 

Specifically, that means using the data collected from an incident, to improve the effectiveness of your assessment processes and remediation efforts.

But, if you think about it, developing a violent incident log allows you to think about information, that if considered BEFORE an actual workplace violence incident occurs, allows you to identify the specific workplace violence safety hazards your employees might face, and determine approaches to remedy those safety hazards before can turn violent. 

Doing this type of pre-incident analysis, instead of waiting until after an actual workplace violence incident, can really increase the likelihood that your employees will return home safely from work each and every day.

To make this process work effectively. You’ll need to identify the types of scenarios where your employees are most likely to encounter workplace violence, and then carry that information through to the next step by using that information to identify effective approaches to keeping your employees safe.

Applying the Elements of a Violent Incident Log and Using Them to Conduct a Safety Assessment

To make this process easier, I’ve taken the different elements from a violent incident log I created for a client, and broken them down into seven steps. These steps can be used to help you forecast potential safety hazards, and apply the thought processes necessary to identify approaches to remediate those risks, without actually having experienced workplace violence.

Step One: Start with identifying the workplace violence source types most likely to target your employees based upon the type of work your employees do, where they work, and who they encounter. These are pretty self-explanatory. 

Source Type (Circle those that apply):

 Type 1: Stranger, unknown to employee, with criminal intent.

 Type 2: Customer, client, visitor, vendor, subcontractor or other “invitee”.

 Type 3: Current or former employee, supervisor, or manager.

 Type 4: Individual with a current or former personal relationship with employee.

Step Two: Think through what elements of your employees’ work puts them into harm’s way:

What are the possible contributing circumstances (Identify any possible contributing factors like work location and setting, shift, working alone, unfamiliar setting, etc.):

Step Three: Based upon the source type and contributing circumstances, identify the most likely places for workplace violence incidents to occur to your employees:

Location (parking lot, inside the workplace, other location such as distributor, traveling):

Step Four: Now take all of these factors, and identify the likeliest types of violence and threats of violence your employees will face, where those threats originate from, how they unfold, where they’ll occur, and how that violence manifests itself:

What is the likely nature of the incident: (Verbal threat, threat on social media, text, email, physical attack including the type of attack, hitting, striking, choking, and any weapons used or threat of being used):

Step Five: Identify based upon the factors you’ve come up with, if the violence was a one time incident, or represents an ongoing threat:

Is the threat a continuing threat or one likely to reoccur:    Yes or No

If the answer above is yes, what actions need to be taken to protect the employee from the continuing threat:

Step Six: Based upon all of the information you’ve developed, game out the types of remediation actions you’d need to take in order to protect your employees from this type of violence. What changes need to be made, what different types of strategies to avoid physical harm would your employees most benefit from based upon the nature of violence they might be subjected to :

Step Seven: Who would be notified within the organization (both to respond in real-time during the incident, and for the complaint and investigation process after the fact), and anyone outside the organization, i.e. law enforcement:

Who was notified of the incident (if law enforcement specify agency):

So even if your employees have not experienced workplace violence, there’s still a benefit in creating a violent incident log, and then using that log to work through it’s different elements, and how those apply to your employees, to help you game out a more effective workplace violence prevention program.

Once you’ve done that. Look at how it compares to the workplace violence prevention program you’ve developed. Where are the two of them similar? Where are they different? And fine tune your prevention program using this information. And if you don’t have a prevention program in place, create your violet incident log using this information, and then use that information to create a rough outline of your workplace violence prevention program

Think of it as reverse engineering your employees to a safer work environment without having to rely on a previous violent incident to do so.

Having to make a judgment call about what your employees need to know in order to protect their physical safety is not something most employers know about.

Workplace violence prevention is more difficult than preventing other workplace issues. It requires an understanding of violence, how it happens, and what steps are effective in preventing it. Here’s my approach:

•  I begin by identifying and assessing the specific safety hazards that your employees face, including how work practices may expose employees to those safety hazards. 
•  I then develop approaches to remediate those safety hazards, and train your employees in those approaches. 
•  I then train employees in strategies to avoid physical harm from the four source types of workplace violence, as well as train employees and incident response teams in what to do should a workplace violence emergency occur.

Schedule a free 15 minute consultation to discuss your workplace violence prevention needs.