Shielding the workforce: Workplace violence prevention

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June 15, 2023 - Workplace violence is the third-leading cause of fatal occupational injuries in the US, with an estimated 700,000 incidents and injuries reported each year. Many cases are left unreported, but as the social and regulatory climate evolves, now is the time for employers to prepare for and prevent workplace violence incidents in their organizations.

Collective responsibility

A common misperception is that it’s the role of “one department” to protect people from workplace violence. Employees may believe the responsible group is Operations or the Security department; however, Operations may think the responsibility lies with Human Resources.

As workplace violence and active threat incidents increase nationwide, the best means of addressing this complex safety concern is through total organizational effort. Involving employees with day-to-day, front-line experience, hand-in-hand with their leadership team sets the tone for integrated prevention strategies. This builds a culture that acknowledges and addresses violence in the workplace and provides resources for a safe and resilient organization.

Taking a holistic approach

Viewing workplace violence in a holistic way can help organizations prepare for and tackle future incidents by:

• Ensuring workers feel safe and supported to boost their overall well-being, morale, and productivity.
• Providing training and learning on work procedures so employees can understand their rights and responsibilities for a safe workplace.
• Encouraging incident reporting by building a culture of trust. Employees should feel that when they report an incident, their employer will take the situation seriously with actions to prevent recurrence rather than retaliating.

It’s important for supervisors to understand the different risks and hazard controls their staff face and use in their work whether it’s an internal operation, community work, or front counter service. Supervisors need the knowledge and resources to recognize and address individual signs of stress and behaviors that could lead to violence from co-workers or clients. Incident reporting, response, and investigation starts with the supervisor. Their dedication and attention to detail in these efforts provides everyone in the organization visibility into the perceived and real risks facing them. This can drive progress improvements and trust in the organization’s system to address and reduce threats and violence.

Management has a critical role to play in leading a workplace culture that is physically and emotionally safe for all employees. Review of workplace violence risks and prompt attention to hazards and concerns increases retention and productivity while driving down medical and emergency costs and absenteeism.

Recognizing that an estimated 20 to 60 percent of workplace violence incidents go unreported, management’s engagement with staff in efforts and encouragement to report incidents can highlight the true nature of acts affecting employees, meaning leadership can mitigate risk to their reputation by addressing concerns as they arise. This can help them scale and target their prevention methods where they are needed most, protecting their employees and the organization’s reputation while building cultural trust and improving the financial bottom line.

Prevention

First, dust off the one-page, anti-violence policy likely adopted years ago that only stated a goal and expectation about violence-free workplaces but did not address how that was going to be achieved. Aligning this policy to the changing workplace violence regulatory and incident landscape helps build toward compliance.

Next, look at the different job tasks and operations and their relative risk levels of violence so that a multidisciplinary team and responsibilities can be united in prevention efforts. From this team, mitigation strategies including procedures, technologies, training, communications, and emergency response can be adopted. Throughout this process, employee engagement is critical to provide insight and focus to a program.

How it looks

Management can achieve easy wins using the resources they already have, such as employee assistance programs, human resources policies, local law enforcement agencies, and employee experience. Implementing an incident-reporting architecture and data analysis gathers real-time data to track success. Investigating each workplace violence incident and aggregating the incident data to understand the causes and characteristics empowers the organization to target and track the issue, develop custom solutions, and provide corrective actions.

Who can build a safety culture?

Everyone has a role in instilling trust and building engagement for successful program implementation. Prevention efforts gain traction when organizations strengthen their policies into specific procedures and use tangible, visible means of workplace security and technology to enhance safety, communication, and response. Management can demonstrate commitment by providing resources and collecting and distributing incident data and corrective actions. Trust is built when employers engage their employees for awareness and input on prevention measures. Employee participation is the key to a successful program.

Total organizational efforts for workplace violence prevention build a work culture around trust with sustainable processes to engage and address the dynamic nature of workplace violence and the changing societal behaviors that impact employees. All employers can benefit from the tips and strategies to understand their risks, take steps to control them, and maximize the positive outcomes of their workplace violence policies and programs.

For further insights, sign up for BSI’s webinar: Workplace violence prevention: A total organizational effort on June 27. Learn more about mitigating workplace violence in the National Safety Council’s new playbook. Read Mark Brown’s 20 Signs Of A Toxic IT Team Culture (And How To Address Them). For more health, safety, and well-being insights, read Jennifer Dobb’s Is your DE&I and well-being strategy actually making an impact? and Surviving to thriving: Overcoming toxic workplace culture by Xavier Alcaraz. For further insights on other HSW, EHS, and Digital Trust topics, visit our Experts Corner.