Don Philpott - The Workplace Violence Prevention Handbook

The Workplace
Violence Prevention
Handbook

The Workplace
Violence Prevention
Handbook

Second Edition

Don Philpott

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Bernan Press

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

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www.rowman.com

800-865-3457; info@bernan.com

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Copyright 2019 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. Bernan Press does not claim copyright in U.S. government information.

ISBN: 978-1-64143-322-8

E-ISBN: 978-1-64143-323-5

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Workplace violence is violence or the threat of violence against workers. It can occur at or outside the workplace and can range from threats and verbal abuse to physical assaults and homicide, one of the leading causes of job-related deaths. No matter how it manifests itself, workplace violence is a growing concern for employers and employees nationwide.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) found that an average of twenty workers are murdered each week in the United States. In addition, an estimated 1 million workers are victims of nonfatal workplace assaults each year. Thats an average of 18,000 assaults every week!

Mass murders on the job by disgruntled employees are media-intensive events. However, these murders, while serious, are relatively infrequent events. It is the threats, harassment, bullying, domestic violence, stalking, emotional abuse, intimidation, and other forms of behavior and physical violence that, if left unchecked, may result in more serious violent behavior. These are the behaviors that supervisors and managers must deal with every day, because employers are responsible for providing a safe and healthful workplace for their employees.

Because workplace violence continues to be a major problem in the nations workplace, effective workplace violence prevention (WVP) programs are essential to identify potential trouble spots and trouble makers, mitigate the effects of any outbreaks, and to ensure all members of staff know what policies are in place to protect and safeguard them.

The importance of management commitment to WVP policies and programs cannot be overemphasized. Top management support helps ensure that adequate resources (including staffing) will be applied to the program, that the program will be launched from the top down, and that the effort will likely be accepted throughout the organization and sustained. Worker participation in planning, development, and implementation of programs and strategies is also important. The concept of dynamic commitment (i.e., involving both management and workers) in WVP is a fundamental necessity underlying the allocation of adequate prevention program resources and the development of a violence prevention culture within an organization.

Another important element is the need for collaboration of people from different disciplines, company units or departments, and levels of the organization. The involvement of persons with diverse expertise and experience is especially critical due to the depth and complexity of WVP. Such teamwork is crucial for planning, developing, and implementing programs, as well as serving discrete functions, such as threat assessment teams formed to review and respond to reported physical, verbal, or threatened violence. Some of the key levels, disciplines, and departments include management, union, human resources (HR), safety and health, security, medical/psychology, legal, communications, and worker assistance.

The prearranged use of outside expertise and collaboration with local law enforcement and local service providers is also a way for companies to ensure effective programs, particularly in smaller companies with fewer workers, departments, and resources. Proactive planning/collaboration with local law enforcement will be helpful should an incident requiring police response occur.

The aim of this book is to assist you in developing safe and effective WVP programs. In order to do this, you must understand the root causes of workplace violence and the threat that they pose. These threats are not just in terms of personal attackswhether verbal or physicalbut also the cost and damage it can do in economic terms.

Once you understand the cause and types of workplace violence, you can then develop a plan to interrupt it, mitigate its effectives, or, ideally, eliminate it completely from the workplace.

There are five general categories of workplace violence:

Type 1. Criminal Intent. The perpetrator has no legitimate relationship to the business or its employee and is usually committing a crime in conjunction with the violence. These crimes can include robbery, shoplifting, trespassing, and terrorism. The vast majority of workplace homicides (85%) fall into this category.

Type 2. Customer/Client . The perpetrator has a legitimate relationship with the business and becomes violent while being served by the business. This category includes customers, clients, patients, students, inmates, and any other group for which the business provides services. It is believed that a large portion of customer/client incidents occurs in the health-care industry, in settings such as nursing homes or psychiatric facilities; the victims are often patient caregivers. Police officers, prison staff, flight attendants, and teachers are some other examples of workers who may be exposed to this kind of WVP, which accounts for approximately 3 percent of all workplace homicides.

Type 3. Worker-on worker . The perpetrator is an employee or past employee of the business who attacks or threatens another employee(s) or past employee(s) in the workplace. Worker-on-worker fatalities account for approximately 7 percent of all workplace homicides.

Type 4. Personal Relationships. 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 assaulted or threatened while at work and accounts for about 5 percent of all workplace homicides.

Type 5. Terrorism . Can be targeted or random attacks aimed at inflicting casualties and death, economic damage, and generating publicity.

Which of these relationships are potentially at play in your workplace today? Each of these types is explored in much greater detail later in this section.

How This Book Is Organized

This book provides a five-step process for understanding and preventing working violence. It looks at the extent of the problem, examines some of the myths surrounding it, and provides early warning and detection signs, best prevention polices and proven defusing, protection, and containment techniques and strategies. At the end of each section there are a combination of case studies, scenarios, worksheets, and checklists to assist you in understanding the steps needed to plan, develop, and execute an effective WVP program.