Why You Need a Workplace Violence or Domestic Terrorism Prevention Plan

At the recent 2016 Energi Risk Management Summit held in Las Vegas, I was invited to sit on the Panel of Experts for Workplace Violence and Domestic Terrorism. We took questions from the attendees and responded to several extremely important issues surrounding the subject. The following questions were among the many that struck to the heart of a serious problem that is pervasive in this period of distinctive events of violent character occurring in our work and public places. It was evident from my observations and the questions that arose that these violence events are:

• Increasing in frequency and severity
• Perplexing to management/administrators and,
• Frustrating their ability to prevent and respond to.

My first question to managers is, “would you bet your paycheck on your prevention and response plans?” Most often no hands are raised so I can asked the next question, “would you bet your retirement on your prevention and response plans?” Both in reality are at stake if you hold positions in Human Resources, Health and Safety, Security, and other mid-level management jobs. We live in a world where blame and finger-pointing is most convenient after an incident puts your company or city on the map. Firings, law suits, imprisonment, insurance liability and loss of reputation can often follow violence incidents that twenty-twenty hind-site suggests may have been avoidable, and or were not addressed adequately by prevention programs, employee training, and good hiring practices.

The good news is you do not have to live in a world of total uncertainty. You do not have to blindly depend on someone else taking care of your individual future security and prosperity. We do not live in a perfect world of no-risk, but we can put in place the necessary elements of prevention and control that can provide an acceptable degree of risk, or reasonable freedom from the high probability of harm. We have the tools that can demonstrate, even in the event of a loss due to perpetrated intended violence, that your programs, practices, plans, and training show you to have addressed the issue with reasonable diligence, and good practices that evidence not being negligent. The implementation of the correct loss-control processes show that you have discharged your responsibilities with a degree of care intended to protect people, property, and interests that otherwise would be openly vulnerable due to lack of such care. That equates to us “doing our job.” Anything else is unacceptable and indefensible.

Summit Questions

How is workplace violence best defined in 2016? What are some of the most common hazards?

Answer: Workplace violence is categorized as a WORK ORGANIZATION HAZARD; Hazards or stressors that cause stress (short term effects) and strain (long-term effects).  These are the hazards associated with workplace issues such as workload, lack of control and/or respect, etc.
Examples of work organization hazards include:

• Workload demands
• Workplace violence
• Intensity and/or pace
• Respect (or lack of)
• Flexibility
• Control or say about things
• Social support/relations
• Sexual harassment

Nearly 2 million American workers report having been victims of workplace violence each year.

It ranges from threats and verbal abuse to physical assaults and even homicide. It can affect and involve employees, clients, customers and visitors. Workplace violence is any act or threat of:

• physical violence
• harassment
• Intimidation, or
• other threatening disruptive behavior that occurs at the work site.

Homicide is currently the fourth-leading cause of fatal occupational injuries in the United States.

• 4,679 fatal workplace injuries that occurred in the United States in 2014, 403 were workplace homicides.
• Homicide is the leading cause of death for women in the workplace.

OSHA’s Four Categories of Workplace Violence

Type I: Criminal intent. In this kind of violent incident, the perpetrator has no legitimate relationship to the business or its employee(s). Rather, the violence is incidental to another crime, such as robbery, shoplifting, or trespassing. Acts of terrorism also fall into this category.

In 2014, 1 percent of workplace homicides were perpetrated by robbers. The “other/unspecified” category, with 27 percent of workplace homicides in that year, may also include instances of criminal intent.

Type II: Customer/client. When the violent person has a legitimate relationship with the business—for example, the person is a customer, client, patient, student, or inmate—and becomes violent while being served by the business, violence falls into this category.

A large portion of customer/client incidents occur in the healthcare industry, in settings such as nursing homes or psychiatric facilities; the victims are often patient caregivers. Police officers, prison staff, flight attendants, and teachers can also become victims of this kind of violence.

About 20 percent of all workplace homicides resulted from Type II violence in 2014, but this category accounts for a majority of nonfatal workplace violence incidents.

Your workplace may be at risk for Type II violence if your business involves dealing with individuals such as criminals or those who are mentally ill or individuals who are confined and under stress, such as airplane passengers who have been sitting on the tarmac or customers waiting in long lines for a store to open.

Type III: Worker-on-worker. The perpetrator of Type III violence is an employee or past employee of the business who attacks or threatens other employee(s) or past employee(s) in the workplace. Worker-on-worker fatalities accounted for approximately 15 percent of all workplace homicides in 2014.

All workplaces are at risk for this type of violence, but workplaces at higher risk include those that do not conduct a criminal background check as part of the hiring process, or are downsizing or otherwise reducing their workforce.

Type IV: Personal relationship. The perpetrator usually does not have a relationship with the business but has a personal relationship with the intended victim. This category includes victims of domestic violence who are assaulted or threatened while at work and accounted for about 7 percent of all workplace homicides in 2014.

This type of violence can occur in all workplaces but is most difficult to prevent in workplaces that are accessible to the public during business hours, such as retail businesses, and/or have only one location, making it impossible to transfer employees who are being threatened. Women are at higher risk of being victims of this type of violence than men.

Definitions-

Abusive behavior:

• intentional action that results in injury or produces fear
• abusive behavior may include assaults, spitting, verbal threats, racial slurs, sexual innuendo, posturing, damaging property, and throwing food or objects.

Battery:

• any unlawful touching
• beating or other wrongful physical contact of another person without consent.

Injury:

• physical or mental harm to an individual resulting in broken bones, lacerations, bruises and contusions, scratches, bites, breaks in the skin, strains and sprains, or
• physical or mental pain and discomfort, immediate or delayed.

Larceny: the wrongful, intentional taking and removing of another’s personal property without use of force or intimidation.

Mental harm:

• anxiety
• fear
• depression
• inability to perform job functions,
• post-traumatic stress disorder or
• other manifestations of emotional reactions to an assault or abusive incident.

Robbery: the intentional and unlawful taking of another’s property by the use of force or intimidation.

Threat: a serious verbal or nonverbal declaration of intent to harm another person.

Violent act: an act ranging from verbal or physical threats or intimidation to assault and battery.

Workplace:

• all locations, permanent or temporary, where work is performed by the employees in the course of their duties
• the locations could include buildings, parking lots, field locations, vehicles, or customers’ homes.

What are the legal ramifications for employers in relation to workplace violence?

Answer: Workplace violence has emerged as a focus of attention in legal circles as well. Legal issues associated with workplace violence can be divided into two broad categories.

• The first arises from the legal responsibility of an employer to safeguard against preventable harm to employees, customers, and anyone else visiting a workplace: in other words, the duty to prevent violence.
• The second has to do with an employer’s obligation to respect employee rights during any investigative or disciplinary process stemming from an incident involving workplace violence or a threat of violence: that is, the duty to appropriately manage incidents or threats that have occurred.

The latter category is discussed below. In terms of the first category, there is no specific law that spells out an employer’s duty to prevent workplace violence. Instead, an employer’s duty to prevent workplace violence emerges from occupational health and safety statutes at the federal and state level, and from judicial decisions (common law precedents) emerging from cases litigated nationwide. Collectively, these create a basic obligation by an employer to take responsible steps to safeguard a workplace from violence.

Under the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act and corresponding state statutes, each employer owes a ‘‘general duty’’ to protect employees against ‘‘recognized hazards’’ that are likely to cause serious injury or death. Workplace violence has been identified as one of those hazards, and both federal and state OSHA agencies have issued citations to employers under the Act’s general duty clause for failure to protect employees against workplace violence.

An employer’s obligation to maintain a safe place to work also arises from the legal principles that exist in most states under common law. Legal principles most commonly discussed in litigated cases involving workplace violence include:

• Premises liability (the duty of a property owner to take responsible steps to guard against reasonably foreseeable violence)
• Respondeat superior (an employer’s indirect liability for the wrongful acts of an employee committed within the course and scope of employment);
• Sexual and other forms of harassment prohibited under discrimination laws (when threats or violence are motivated by a victim’s protected status); and
• A collection of negligence theories, including negligent hiring (the failure to properly screen job applicants, particularly for sensitive positions involving a high degree of interaction with the public); negligent supervision (the failure to supervise employees and to discipline violators of anti-violence rules); and negligent retention (the failure to terminate employees who have engaged in behavior in violation of company policies).

The abundance of activity around the issue makes clear that workplace violence is an important concern for American employers. It also tells employers that if they wish to take steps to protect their employees, customers, and property from violence, they need not reinvent the wheel but can draw on knowledge and experience that is already available.

One lesson that emerges from the work already done in the field is that workplace violence cannot be the exclusive concern of any single division or constituency in an organization, or the community in which the organization operates. An effective response will require a multidisciplinary approach involving the attention and efforts of multiple stakeholders.

Is it important to have a written policy about workplace violence?

Answer: The most important component of any workplace violence prevention program is management commitment. Management commitment is best communicated in a written policy. The policy should:

• Be developed by management and employee representatives
• Apply to management, employee’s, clients, independent contractors and anyone who has a relationship with your company
• Define what you mean by workplace violence in precise, concrete language
• Provide clear examples of unacceptable behavior and working conditions
• State in clear terms your organization’s view toward workplace violence and its commitment to the prevention of workplace violence
• Precisely state the consequences of making threats or committing violent acts
• Outline the process by which preventive measures will be developed.
• Encourage reporting of all incidents of violence
• Protect anonymity of persons who make reports
• Outline the confidential process by which employees can report incidents and to whom
• Assure no reprisals will be made against reporting employees.

Above all, policies and procedures must be consistently applied, and forward-looking to prevention first and response second.