3 Critical Areas to Strengthen Workplace Violence Prevention and Response

Security expert James Sporleder and Atana Chief Scientific Officer, Amanda H. , Ph.D. recently reviewed the 14 essential questions ASIS International recommends organization ask to identify potential gaps in their workplace violence prevention and intervention program. They provide their perspective below on how to prioritize them into critical areas, the importance of keeping and nurturing a workplace violence prevention plan, and how to link training to prevention priorities.

To Avoid Gaps, Prioritize 3 Critical Areas

ASIS’ concerns regarding potential gaps in organizational workplace violence prevention plans fall into three categories.

1. Ensure training covers prevention and response: Workplace violence training should cover both prevention and response, giving staff the skills to spot concerning behaviors and to know what to do when they witness them. Additionally, employees must have a basic understanding of how to respond in the event of extreme or life-threatening violence.
2. Enable measurement of management support: Consistent endorsement and involvement from leaders builds trust and helps create a psychologically safe space where people bring concerns forward early on. Regular surveys or feedback mechanisms can measure how engaged management is and employees' perception of leadership’s support.?
3. Build a safety mindset and encourage reporting: Cultivate a mindset where safety and security are everyone’s responsibility and employees feel comfortable bringing up concerns. Keep reporting processes simple and accessible and follow-through on every report. Remind employees regularly that early reporting is the key to violence prevention.

Ideally, what works best for this type of ongoing approach is a training solution with a built-in continuous feedback mechanism.

Make Workplace Violence Prevention Ongoing

ASIS reminds us that effective workplace violence prevention isn’t just about having a written plan; it’s about keeping and nurturing that plan so that it is active and relevant. This means regularly assessing the impact of training, ensuring people understand the reporting process, checking that plan mechanics are functioning as intended, and encouraging continued leadership support for workplace safety and security. To truly be effective, a prevention plan needs consistent follow-through and honest feedback on what’s helping and what needs adjustment. Ideally, what works best for this type of ongoing approach is a training solution with a built-in continuous feedback mechanism.

Atana’s Getting Real About Workplace Violence eLearning solution serves multiple purposes. It educates employees and managers on all aspects of workplace violence awareness, prevention, and response. And its contextual questions provide behavioral insights that organizations can use to determine the effectiveness of learning as well as help identify gaps in their program.

Organizations can actually see the extent to which learners are likely to take the desired actions taught in the course and even drill down to more granular data related to factors that influence those behaviors.

Desired Behavior: Support prevention efforts by sharing any concerns about alarming behavior or conduct

Behavioral Influencers measured...

• Attitudes towards sharing concerns
• Perceived organizational support for sharing a concern

• Expectation of negative consequences from sharing a concern
• Obstacles to sharing a concern?

Desired Behavior: Support safety and security by acting immediately to get safe if there is violence at work Behavioral Influencers measured...

• Perceived ability to act if there is violence
• Obstacles to getting safe if there is violence

• Leadership and peer support for acting right away if there is violence?

All this data is easily accessible on clients’ Atana Insights dashboard, enabling them to easily spot where training is working and where gaps may exist.

Given the results from the training, organizational leaders have the information they need to address the pivotal questions proposed by ASIS.

Linking Training to Prevention Priorities

While Atana customers can view specific results within their organization as described above, broader trends from aggregated data reveal key insights training can have on whether ASIS-identified workplace violence prevention priorities are being met or are falling in the gap.

Showing Positive Impact

Is management supportive of violence prevention efforts?

Insight: 90% of employees trained with Getting Real About Workplace Violence feel supported by their managers in both prevention and response efforts. This strong support from leadership indicates that managers are trusted partners in maintaining a safe workplace.

Are employees encouraged to report circumstances of concerns?

Insight: After Getting Real About Workplace Violence training, 93% of employees report positive attitudes toward sharing safety concerns, and 88% feel supported by coworkers in these efforts. This combination of personal motivation and coworker support reflects a strong, safety and security-focused culture.

Revealing Prevention Gaps

Does the organization manage and track reports of concerning behavior?

Insight:? While 87% of employees trained with Getting Real About Workplace Violence feel confident their concern would be handled professionally, only 67% feel the process for sharing a concern is easy. This highlights a prevention gap that should be addressed.?

Does the organization have protocols for managing emergencies?

Insight: 40% of employees trained with Getting Real About Workplace Violence reported obstacles to getting safe should there be an act of extreme violence. This data requires investigation into the nature of the obstacles and what can be done to remove them. ??

Training with built-in measurement and feedback will help your organizations move from merely discussing workplace violence prevention to taking meaningful action. This data-driven approach ensures employee understanding, identifies gaps, and creates safer, more supportive workplaces.

Are the ASIS-identified workplace violence prevention priorities being met within your organization, or falling in the gap? Discover how data-driven training can help.