Acts of Workplace Violence
Issue #8
May 21, 2007
In today’s world, mass murders in the workplace by unstable employees are media-intensive events. Due to this increased media attention, the perception is that mass murder in the workplace is on the rise. In reality, mass murder is a relatively infrequent event. According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the real threat of workplace violence is the bullying, threats, or harassment from abusive coworkers that creates an insecure and non-productive work environment. And these actions, if left unchecked, can escalate to more serious violent behavior down the road. To minimize the risk of workplace violence, and to provide your workers with a safe work environment, experts agree that a solid workplace violence prevention program is essential.
Overview
Since the mid-1990s, workplace violence has been recognized as a specific category of violent crime that calls for distinct responses from employers, law enforcement officials and the community.
The few research and preventive efforts that existed prior to that time were focused on specific high-risk areas, such as patient assaults on health care workers, and the high robbery and murder risks facing taxi drivers and late-night convenience store clerks.
Today, occupational safety specialists and other analysts have broadly agreed that responding to workplace violence requires attention to more than just an actual physical attack. Homicide and other physical assaults are on a continuum that also includes domestic violence, stalking, threats, harassment, bullying, emotional abuse, intimidation, and other forms of conduct that create anxiety, fear, and a climate of distrust in the workplace. All are part of the workplace violence problem.
The Four Types of Workplace Violence
Prevention programs that do not consider harassment in all forms are unlikely to be effective. To help sort out the different types of workplace violence, specialists agree that workplace violence falls into four broad categories. They are:
- TYPE 1: Violent acts by criminals who have no other connection with the workplace but enter to commit robbery or another crime.
Type 1 acts of violence account for the vast majority—nearly 80 percent—of workplace homicides. In these incidents, the motive is usually theft, and in a great many cases, the criminal is carrying a gun or other weapon, increasing the likelihood that the victim will be killed or seriously wounded. This type of violence falls heavily on particular occupational groups whose jobs make them vulnerable. This includes: taxi drivers (the job that carries by far the highest risk of being murdered), late-night retail or gas station clerks, and others who are on duty at night, who work in isolated locations or dangerous neighborhoods, and who carry or have access to cash.
Type 1 preventive strategies include an emphasis on physical security measures, special employer policies, and employee training. In fact, it is suggested that one of the reasons for the decline in workplace homicides since the early 1990s is due to the security measures put in place by businesses that may be vulnerable to this type of activity. Because the outside criminal has no other contact with the workplace, the interpersonal aspects of violence prevention that apply to the other three categories are normally not relevant to Type 1 incidents.
The response after a crime has occurred will involve conventional law enforcement procedures for investigating, finding and arresting the suspect, and collecting evidence for prosecution. For that reason, even though Type 1 events represent a large share of workplace violence (homicides in particular) and should in no way be minimized, the rest of this issue will focus mainly on the remaining types. - TYPE 2: Violence directed at employees by customers, clients, patients, students, inmates, or any others for whom an organization provides services. In general, the violent acts occur as workers are performing their normal tasks. In some occupations, dealing with dangerous people is inherent in the job, as in the case of a police officer, correctional officer, security guard, or mental health worker. For other occupations, violent reactions by a customer or client are unpredictable, triggered by an argument, anger at the quality of service or denial of service, delays, or some other precipitating event.
Employees experiencing the largest number of Type 2 assaults are those in healthcare occupations—nurses in particular, as well as doctors and nurses aides who deal with psychiatric patients; members of emergency medical response teams; and hospital employees working in admissions, emergency rooms, and acute care units. - TYPE 3: Violence committed by a present or former employee against coworkers, supervisors, or managers.
- TYPE 4: Violence committed in the workplace by someone who doesn’t work there, but has a personal relationship with an employee—an abusive spouse or domestic partner.
Types 3 and 4 are no less or more dangerous, or damaging, than any other violent act. But when the violence comes from an employee or someone close to an employee, there is a much greater chance that some warning sign will have reached the employer in the form of observable behavior. That knowledge, along with the appropriate prevention programs, can at the very least mitigate the potential for violence or prevent it altogether.
The Role of Employers
Employers have a legal and ethical obligation to promote a work environment free from threats and violence and, in addition, can face economic loss as the result of violence in the form of lost work time, damaged employee morale and productivity, increased workers’ compensation payments, medical expenses, and possible lawsuits and liability costs. An employer’s important roles in violence prevention can include:
- Adopting a workplace violence policy and prevention program and communicating the policy and program to employees.
- Providing regular training in preventive measures for all new/current employees, supervisors, and managers.
- Supporting, not punishing, victims of workplace or domestic violence.
- Adopting and practicing fair and consistent disciplinary procedures.
- Fostering a climate of trust and respect among workers and between employees and management.
- When necessary, seeking advice and assistance from outside resources, including threat-assessment psychologists, psychiatrists and other professionals, social service agencies, and law enforcement.
The Role of Employees
Employees have the right to expect a work environment that promotes safety from violence, threats, and harassment. They can actively contribute to preventive practices by doing the following:
- Accept and adhere to an employer’s preventive policies and practices.
- Become aware of and report violent or threatening behavior by coworkers or other warning signs.
- Follow procedures established by the workplace violence prevention program, including those for reporting incidents.
The Role of Law Enforcement Agencies
Over the last several years, law enforcement agencies have been leading the way in how they and the rest of the criminal justice system respond to domestic and school violence. Those changes have placed greater emphasis on prevention and responding to threats and minor incidents, rather than the traditional view that serious effort and police resources should be reserved for serious offenses only after a crime has occurred.
This proactive approach, utilizing community policing concepts, can be applied to workplace situations as well. This approach can include:
- Outreach to employers, especially to smaller employers that do not have the resources to maintain their own security staff.
- Setting up a system for assisting employers in background checks, workplace site reviews, evacuation plans, etc.
- Assisting employers in developing prevention programs and assuring that threats or less serious incidents will be responded to.
- Training officers in threat assessment and, if a department’s resources permit, establishing a specialized threat assessment unit.
- Training officers in relevant laws (e.g. harassment and stalking) and response procedures for workplace problems.
The Role of Unions
Unions should regard workplace safety, including safety from violence, as an employee’s right, just as worthy of union defense as wages or any other contractual right. A responsible union will include these among its obligations to its members:
- Support for employers’ violence prevention policies and practices.
- Being a partner in designing and carrying out violence prevention programs.
- Defending workers’ rights to due process, but also supporting appropriate disciplinary actions that protect everyone’s safety (e.g. sanctions for bringing a weapon to the workplace).
- Cooperating with and contributing to training efforts.
The Role of Occupational Safety & Criminal Justice Agencies
Occupational safety and criminal justice agencies at the state and federal level can play an obvious and important role in meeting the workplace violence challenge. Their contributions can include efforts to:
- Improve monitoring and refine methods of calculating the incidence and costs of workplace violence.
- Continue developing and refining model policies and violence prevention plans and conduct public awareness campaigns to inform employers about preventive strategies.
- Give special attention to developing strategies that can improve violence prevention in smaller companies and for lower-paid, lower-status workers.
The Role of the Community
Medical, mental health and social service community contributions can include:
- Refining and improving threat assessment methods and intervention strategies.
- Outreach to employers, including smaller employers, to educate about risks and offer services for problem employees or in violence prevention planning.
- Additional research in such areas as detecting warning signs, treatment of potentially dangerous people, workplace violence prevention training, incident monitoring and measurement, support services for victims, and helping employees after a traumatic event.
Legislators, policymakers, and the legal community can review legal questions raised by efforts to prevent and mitigate threats and violence. The legal community might consider whether adjustments to gun laws, laws governing privacy and defamation, the Americans with Disabilities Act, wrongful termination, and other legal areas have to be made to facilitate preventive efforts while still protecting individual rights.