Putting an End to Workplace Violence

What does it take to create a safe environment for employees? Park Dietz and other experts and CSOs discuss how to head off a security department's worst nightmare: Workplace violence.

An important part of educating the workforce is teaching employees to ask for help. "An employee may feel uncomfortable intervening, may be intimidated, and if there's a union, there may be environmental influences that cause them not to report things to the proper people," says Brown. "I want them to buy in to our process."

Often there's already plenty of expertise available through HR and employee assistance programs or corporate security and legal departments. Their purpose is to reinforce the idea that employees shouldn't feel timid about asking for help and to ease their burden of having to make a judgment about how to handle a situation.

Asking employees to volunteer information about their private lives is also tricky but necessary to ensuring the safety of everyone in the workplace. Employees at AdvancePCS are asked to make their managers aware if they have taken out a restraining order so that corporate security will know that the individual is not allowed on the property. "We make it clear that we respect your privacy, and we want you to be safe and happy and performing to the best of your ability as often as possible," says Brown. "We maintain their confidence, we don't spread gossip, and we give them some counseling and suggest some changes in behavior so that they leave feeling better able to cope and grateful that they came forward. As word spreads, more people are willing to talk to us."

Finally, employees should be taught to trust their instincts. At Procter & Gamble, Ed Casey, director of worldwide corporate security, tells his managers, "If you feel something is not right, if your gut tells you it's not healthy, then involve the multifunctional team."

As companies take their workplace violence prevention programs forward, they face a number of ongoing challenges. But the largest by far is keeping workplace violence training current in an ever-changing employee population. "The churn of people in the workplace is a challenge," says Brown. "You can build a team that's really knowledgeable and six months later its all changed." Brown notes how four years ago, he took all of his senior managers, including the CEO, to Scottsdale, Ariz., for one of TAG's workplace violence seminars. "Only one person is left out of that group," Brown says. "A new company has purchased us, and this time next year the team will have changed again." That means he has to go through the process of reeducating his workforce on workplace violence and convince management again that this is a worthy investment for corporate funds. To help expedite the training process, Brown plans to move the training to a CD-ROM and to the company's intranet. The handbook and policy will be available on the intranet as well, and new supervisors and managers will take a workplace violence test online to assess their understanding of the problem and the company's policies. Every two years they have to take a refresher course and pass the test.