Conference Preview
No one wants to see violence happen in the workplace, but all too often, it takes place. That’s why an upcoming National Comp. session, Before the Breaking Point: An Integrated Framework for Workplace Violence Prevention and Response, looks to educate and change how employers prioritize safety.
Dan Hanlon of Noble Group, Dr. Ann Hawkins of Health Karma, and Ari Stowell of HCA previewed the session and shared lessons on how to support a workplace that values prevention and encourages the “say something” component of “see something, say something.”
‘Without a Doubt, it’s Culture’
Employers can craft policies and training programs, but without buy-in from the teams subject to those efforts, not much will happen, so workplace violence prevention necessarily depends on the environment.
“Without a doubt, it’s culture,” Stowell said regarding the most important component of a safety program. “And what I’ve seen truly is it needs to be a shift in the conversation from reacting to incidents, which is how it was when I first entered this role, to more proactively preventing them from happening in the first place.”
Prevention can have a reactive component, and Hanlon stressed the importance of documentation as way to stay ahead of what could happen. So, encouraging reporting and keeping records of reports can change a workplace culture from one that’s not ready to one that’s staying ahead of problems.
“If you have a reporting system that documents concerns and takes note of them, it’s going to put a red flag in the system, and the command center can say, ‘Well, here’s a concern, and there’s a concern,'” Hanlon said. “And although they’re two or three months apart, they’re serious enough where we need to have some type of intervention with this employee, talk to them, and see how they’re doing.”
What to Look For
Most people can probably remember a time when someone they worked with seemed a little off, but does that mean that is a person who is a threat to carry out violence?
Not necessarily, and Hawkins explained that commonsense is always a helpful tool.
“For all of us, our body tells us that something interesting is going on, which is noticeable to other people,” Hawkins said. “It might be that Susie’s come to work for three days and hasn’t had a shower, or I’m smelling something on John that I haven’t smelled before, and I just want someone to know.”
From there, it’s important to have steps between a report and helping an employee.
“That goes from thinking about doing something to actually doing it,” Hawkins said. “I think if we can just get in front of people and provide behavioral health services, wellbeing services to people to let individuals know that everybody’s going through stuff, but when you look at a coworker and notice something is changing and it’s getting to be noticeable, that’s when you call in.”
Hanlon emphasized that rarely does an issue pop up out of nowhere.
“I think it’s the same person that gets complained about over and over in small ways to different people,” Hanlon said. “So, whether it’s a shift leader that hears a complaint, HR hears another complaint two months later, a coworker says something to a friend, or somebody sees something posted in social media, collectively, they mean a lot.”
Tech Helps, but Human Judgment Rules
Duress buttons and reporting apps are huge advances in technology that can go great lengths to keeping workers safe, but accountability and human nature are still a must.
“Technology is an enabler, absolutely, but it’s not a substitute for leadership,” Stowell said. “Technology cannot teach how to de-escalate an actively aggressive individual patient, colleague, leader, whoever; it can’t build that trust, and it certainly cannot create psychological safety for our employees.”
Even with all the power and resources AI has behind it, it’s only a helper, not a replacement, Stowell said.
“AI can’t replace judgment during those difficult situations,” she said. “So, our wearable devices, for example, may help summon assistance and they may help immediate get assistance it goes directly to security, and we have geo mapping included and all of these wonderful things, but culture determines whether people actually report the concern.”
Actionable Steps
For organizations looking to make progress on better workplace violence prevention programs, the key might be to ask the right questions and measure the right metrics.
“If a threat came in tomorrow, either from an employee or someone outside your organization, who owns the decision in the first five minutes, and how confident are you in that answer?” Hawkins asked.
That level of accountability is foundational to preventing workplace violence.
“High-performing organizations treat it just like any other safety risk with data-driven prevention strategies and continuous improvement processes,” Stowell said. “But I think we need to look at it a little bit differently from that. I think implementing corrective actions and then holding leaders accountable is where change happens.”
The accountability piece isn’t just good from an organizational standpoint. Hanlon explained that it can save workers and their families from what has the potential to be their worst-ever day.
“As a police officer, you know, you think, well, you like making arrests, you like doing these things. Well, after 30 years in law enforcement, you think just the opposite. You think, how could you have avoided this situation? How could you avoid the next?” Hanlon said. “What are the triggers that could have avoided the chaos and the violence and the fact that families are broken apart? You want the substance abuse counseling, you want the mental health counseling, you want all that so people aren’t injured, so families aren’t broken apart.”
