Contents

1. Making a Commitment in Preventing Workplace Violence...

2. Why the Concern...?

3. Developing Your Workplace Violence Prevention Program...

1. Making a Commitment in Preventing Workplace Violence...

As we approach the beginning of our traditional holiday periods, I wanted to continue keeping the emphasis on the relevant topics of Workplace Violence Prevention and Workplace Security Awareness. Workplace Violence continues to remain on the top three lists of concerns for executives, security directors and those responsible for its prevention.

In the Business & Legal Report, September 21, 2005 edition, Paul Viollis, President of Risk Control Strategies made a presentation at the National Safety Council's Congress & Expo on the topic of Workplace Violence. He said, "With all the available data on workplace violence, no employer can claim credibly that it had no idea of the risk of workplace violence, including domestic violence." He further said, "Employers and safety managers must mitigate the risk of workplace violence by maintaining a "standard of care," which includes having a comprehensive policy on workplace violence, training employees on what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior at work and adhering to best practices of security and access control."

Because of these concerns, I got all or most of my gray hair worrying about Mr. Viollis' very points as applied to the little to no attention the small to midsize business community seems to receive until something happens. Why wait for the aftermath when ample time exist now to prepare properly by taking proactive measures?

2. Why the Concern...?

From a business perspective, Workplace Violence is debilitating at minimum and disastrous at worst. Once the contributory factors are identified, one needs to look at how the behavior adversely affects the businesses bottom line. Therefore, a disruptive act of violence can literally put a business out of business.

The metrics to consider in arriving at the conclusions are based on lower productivity, reduced profitability, poor morale, reduced performance, increased absenteeism, higher sick leave costs and faster personnel turnover, increased employee grievances, investigative resources and time spent and an increase in compensation claims. Of critical concern is the affect of business interruption and continuity related to the crime scene and business disruption. What happens to the operation and those employees involved? What about the possibility of a civil court award for failing to provide a safe workplace or the serious injury of an employee at the workplace or while working?

3. Developing Your Workplace Violence Prevention Program...

When developing your workplace violence prevention program, certain steps in the suggested process are required if one is to validate the actions to be taken.

- Identify a need for the workplace violence prevention policy.

- Form a committee to collect all of the security related business requirements that affect the business.

- Use the committee to create the written security policy to include hiring, termination, rules for acceptable behavior. rules for progressive disciplinary action and the role of leaders in the process.

- Conduct a Critical Vulnerability Risk Assessment of the business requirements and practices.

- Publish and implement the security policy.

- Train the workforce on workplace violence prevention, security awareness and accountability.

- Create your threat assessment and crisis management teams.

- Test, improve, measure compliance and measure the program's effectiveness.

It is important to note that a lack of compliance leads to security lapses that create the negative factors cited above.

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