Workplace Violence in Corporate Terms: Throw Out the Old Paradigms

Most progressive security managers can quote the statistics verbatim. Addressing workplace violence takes up an ever-growing piece of our pie charts and more massive chunks of our operating budgets. If you work in the healthcare security industry, you know workplace violence education and mitigation is a focal point what we do. Working in the industry that leads the statistical pack, may help make you more cognizant of the concern, but it does not necessarily better position you to address it.

           Regardless of which industry you work in (top of the statistical charts or the bottom), the impact is realized:

           Case A: Your organization is at the forefront of community based healthcare. Located in the heart of a major city, your emergency department sees all the action necessary to fill hours of a television drama. You fit right at the top of the OSHA statistics and workplace violence is part of daily work life. In fact, unless someone ends up shot or dead by any other means, staff carries on about its business. However, no different than the organizations less impacted by workplace violence, your Security department sees minimal dollars to operate as a necessary support structure and does little to drive any violence reduction efforts. Your Risk and Social services departments have neither the time, nor the funding to do little more than disseminate the latest workplace violence articles from journals that come across their desk.

           Case B: You work for a prestigious real estate firm that caters to a mostly upper-middle class community. Although the office has been growing in numbers, the root of the team is comprised on long tenured staff. With numerous transactions taking place in conference rooms throughout, the noise level still remains that of a public library. The environment is not prone to the headline grabbing workplace violence cases we hear about almost daily. Though no professional environment is immune. Today a disgruntled husband believes the closing on the former marital house is not working in his favor. Like many cases of workplace violence, the physical strike about to occur has evolved over a period of time. This stress induced aggression has been building for weeks and today it’s reached its breaking point. No one has done any thing along the way to intervene. The aggressor has done nothing himself to positively impact the stressors attributing to his anxiety. And today, it has reached a head as his fist strikes the realtor’s face.

           If this transitioned to a survey of security practitioners asking which organization is exposed to greater liability, what would support a correct answer? Traditionally, if the organization should have known the circumstances around the aggressor’s immediate, troubling past-or the company fell “high” on a risk analysis of workplace violence, your finance managers might as well get the checkbook out.

           Today, reduction of liability is not as simple as looking out for and identifying red flags. The organization must take a holistic approach to workplace violence reduction. Holistic is not just a popular term; it sums up all an organization does to protect and educate its staff. We have seen the best protected (physically and legally) organizations forced to take responsibility and accept the litigious consequences of incidents of workplace violence.

           So who leads the charge? Risk? Security? Legal? Human Resources? With little doubt the settlement dollars connected to workplace violence cases demonstrate the reduction philosophy must be preached from the top and practiced throughout the organization. We know that dollars drive business decisions. In fact dollars are indeed that top drivers aren’t they? WRONG! The single largest driver in any healthy organization is always the wellbeing of its people. If an employee is injured as a direct, or indirect result of an act of workplace violence, the litigation and financial consequences will be the very least of the company’s concerns. The recovery of your staff’s morale, the healing of the impacted employee (physical and emotional) and helping everyone feel safe returning to work, will take much longer than anticipated. In some extreme cases, there have been smaller organizations who were forced to shut their doors as a result of the long-term impacts from acts of workplace violence.

           Being proactive and protecting your people takes commitment to a company-wide philosophy. If there is a singular constant among all workplace violence education, it is the installation of a company “zero tolerance” policy. When the belief that violence at any level is not acceptable comes from the highest levels of the organization, there is very little question to the reality of potential consequences. TERMINATE, TERMINATE, TERMINATE. Zero tolerance means just that. The policy cannot be a scare tactic, it must be a living philosophy that no member of the organization doubts. Attaching the highest level of discipline to the policy, translates to establishing a culture of safety.

           When evaluating training programs suitable for staff, the most significant factor has to be practicality. People will not remember nor rely upon programs that are complicated. Throw in fear, anger or anxiety into the equation and complex, elaborate, psychology based de-escalation programs may become useless. Dollars for workplace violence education and mitigation must be spent wisely and must translate to a real return on their human investment. Programs that stress the application of every day skills applied effectively and at the appropriate time, will have a positive and lasting impact on your staff. They will become skills applied and utilized to de-escalate potentially violent encounters well before they arise. Your staff may be applying many of these regularly. Tracking and trending successful de-escalation is difficult. Documenting zero incidence of workplace violence is not.

           Workplace violence prevention is a key part of safety planning in all industries and needs to be a focal point of an organization’s culture. Regardless of risk factors, proactive and practical steps have to be implemented to achieve real results. How best to measure your company’s success: Do your employees feel safe at work?