Are you prepared? Violence in the American workplace w/ Rob Sylvester

The OSHA General Duty clause states that every employer has the duty to provide work and a workplace that's free of recognized hazards. Workplace violence is not a traditional hazard like a piece of machinery, repetitive motion, heavy lifting, falls, or confined spaces. It’s a threat from co-workers or as OSHA defines it, clients, customers and even visitors to the workplace. Do the statistics make workplace violence a new recognized hazard?   The National Safety Council reports that in 2016, 17 percent of workplace deaths were a result of violence. And according to OSHA, about 2 million people each year report some type of workplace violence. The more you look at it, the more you see that this could happen anywhere people are at work, even your own workplace.   So, as a business owner, are you prepared? Or as a worker, do you know what your employer's plan is? And as a supervisor or a leader within the workplace, do you know what action to take when it happens? In this episode, “Are you prepared? Violence in the American workplace”, Rob Sylvester and I take on what workplace violence is, some of the causes, some strategies for prevention, and how to be prepared if it happens.  Check it out. ***  Peter Koch: Hello listeners, and welcome to the MEMIC's Safety Experts podcast. A veteran city engineer shot and killed 12 people at his office in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he worked for years. A sous chef at a restaurant in Peabody, Mass. Was stabbed to death by a co-worker. And on the day he was fired from the Henry Pratt Company in Aurora, Illinois, a worker returned to the plan and opened fire, killing five workers and wounding five police officers. These are all recent and tragic headlines outlining workplace violence from around the country. And the statistics are even more sobering. The National Safety Council reports that in 2016, 17 percent of workplace deaths were a result of violence. And according to OSHA, about 2 million people each year report some type of workplace violence. OSHA estimates that 25 percent of workplace violence goes unreported. The more you look at it, the more you see that this can happen anywhere. And you might think that it could happen some place, even at your work. So, as a business owner, if you're listening, are you prepared? Or as a worker, do you know what your employer's plan is? And as a supervisor or a leader within the workplace, do you know what to do when it happens? I'm your host, Peter Koch, and for today's episode. Are you prepared? Violence in the American workplace. I have Rob Sylvester. Safety management consulting with MEMIC on the line. And together, we will look at workplace violence. Why it happens and what you can do to prepare to be prepared for it. Rob, welcome to the podcast. Rob Sylvester: Morning, Pete. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate your time so we can talk more about workplace violence and how we can assist people out there and developing programs. Everything ranging from recognizing to policies and procedures to truly response and, of course, recovery of an incident. Those statistics you gave were quite alarming. They say that half a million employees miss an estimated 1.8 million workdays, which is 55 million dollars of lost wages alone with an estimated losses of 130 billion dollars. That's with a B. So, combined with your statistics and taking that and even further, as they say, homicide is the leading cause of death for women in the workplace. Very alarming for anybody on this call today. Peter Koch: Yeah. No kidding. Those those are truly sobering statistics, not only from the impact to the work, which you don't really think about that you always think about the impact to the person or the people who are affected by the violent act that occurs in the workplace. But the impact to the business that you had mentioned recovery before. How do you recover both personally and how does the business recover from workplace violence? But that impact of 1.8 million lost workdays and 130 billion dollars, and that's each year, is that correct? Or is that total all across the board? Rob Sylvester: My understanding is that's per year, which is an amazing statistics statistic. And as you mentioned, the cost of the workplace violence incident goes well beyond the initial or direct costs. Of course, we in a safety as safety professionals, we like to concentrate on the person and then help with processes and procedures and of course, you know, the typical policies in place. But that cost goes so far beyond just workers compensation, of course. You know, there's lost productivity and it's not just the person involved in the incident, but those around them. You know, when you see an incident occur, whether it's harassment, bullying or full on assault or or mass shootings, you know, people are scared to come to work. The the articles you read earlier, they just they're prevalent in today's society. And it's very unfortunate, at least a decreased morale at the workplace and at home. You know, fear, bad public relations. How often do we turn the news on, and we see something in the news that's related to workplace violence? And then, of course, medical costs, legal fees and other expenses that go along. But truly, how that affects the person and their family. It's quite alarming. Peter Koch: Yeah, most people think about going to work as a safe place. They might not have a safe place at home to come back to or their community might not might not be a safe place. Their their their home life might not be safe. And so, some people actually come to work looking for that safety and security of their their work friends or their work family. And. And when you consider it, many people spend the majority of their work week at work, instead of at home. So, I come to work. I want to be safe. I want to be able to contribute and to do the job that I'm employed for. It reaps the benefits with whether that be the paycheck or the relationship that I find with my work friends. However, when that when that safety gets crushed by an event in the workplace, whether it be something as significant as the headlines that I read, whether it be a killing within the workplace or another act of violence or something, even something even, I won't say less, but something that is. Not so connected to to a physical, violent act could be an emotionally violent act that sort of tears your world apart and all of a sudden it changes how things are going. That's that's tough. Really tough. Rob Sylvester: Excellent points, Pete. You know, we go back to definitions, you know, workplace violence isn't just that mass shooting or true assault, that physical altercation. It goes to any threatening behavior or behavior excuse me, threatening behavior or even verbal abuse that occurs in the work setting. And whether you're a family owned small business range or ranging all the way up to multimillion-dollar multi-location corporations and any class of business. There is exposure's out there. Their work setting is any location, whether it's a day to day or just a temporary work that employees performing work. So, if this is somebody on the road, that's their workplace. So, we really need employers to assist their employees with identifying precursors to true workplace violence and understanding that there should be a zero-tolerance policy regardless of where they are at work, regardless of whom is doing that, how it's coming across. Because again, in today's society, you know, things can escalate very quickly. We never know what's going on in somebody else's life, whether it's a personal or professional life that's going on that may cause them to have a trigger that's going to create a negative behavior. And then we end up with consequences such as mass shootings or assaults in the workplace. So really, it's key to have a program in place where employees are trained to recognize those triggers and precursors to workplace violence events. Peter Koch: Yeah, you bring up a really good point that we normally think of workplace violence, especially because of the headlines that it is this. It's a mass shooting, it's a stabbing, it's an alter, a physical altercation between two people. But you alluded to that it's not that I was looking up some definitions before. And you can see OSHA actually has a definition of workplace violence so I'm going to, I'm just read it here because I think it fits into our part of the conversation. We can talk about the nuances of it. So, OSHA defines workplace violence as, quote, any act or threat of physical violence, harassment, intimidation or other threatening disruptive behavior that occurs at the worksite. It ranges from threats and verbal abuse to physical assaults and even homicide. It can affect and involve employees, clients, customers and visitors, end quote. So, there's a lot in there. I mean, that workplace violence, the word workplace violence or the term covers so much more than maybe what we think is a typical definition. So, let's let's talks to let's talk about some of those other things that might actually be precursors to the big physical altercation that we need to catch earlier. Rob Sylvester: Excellent points, Pete. And as you say that we talk about the statistics, they say that, you know, as you said earlier, 25 percent really go unreported and that maybe even a low number I read, depending on types of business, that it might be higher than 40 or 50 percent go unreported. Many times, we have bullying in the workplace and people don't look at that as workplace violence. But truly, by definition, it is. Peter Koch: Yeah, and that is that's pretty crazy when you start to think about and we've all had that experience, I think at the workplace where we felt possibly uncomfortable with the words or actions of somebody else as they confront or approach us. And certainly, we need to to take some of it with a grain of salt and have a little thick skin when we're in the workplace. But it can only go to a certain point. And then we have. It has to be curtailed. It has to be reported. It has to it has to stop so we can have a safe place and we feel safe in the workplace. Rob Sylvester: Definitely agree, Pete. You know, it ranges everything from dealing with your co-workers to customers to patients if you're in health care. But it goes across the board. It truly is anything when those different forms that you talked about, intimidating or frightening others. You know, it doesn't have to be somebody slamming a desk or a computer, you know, harassing, stalking or even showing undue focus on an individual, especially in a negative manner. These things all need to be addressed because we don't know if and when that is going to escalate. So, we definitely need to nip these things in the bud. And as you said, you know, develop, you know, thicker skin. But at the same time, recognize these things. And employers, we have to have something in place. We have to have reporting mechanisms in place and people feel safe. There's not going to be retribution for them coming to whether it's human resources, security department. And as you mentioned earlier, you know, OSHA has a definition of workplace violence. But many don't know that there is no specific OSHA standard on workplace violence. And. Go ahead. Peter Koch: No, it is. They don't have a standard workplace violence. And I guess we could talk OSHA for just a moment. I think as OSHA would see it at this point, they talk quite a bit about OSHA or workplace violence on the Web site because it is it is becoming more and more prevalent. But every employer has the duty to provide a workplace that's free of recognized hazards. And here we go. This is that new recognized hazard that's out there. It's not a hazard from a piece of machinery or repetitive motion or heavy lifting or falls or hearing or confined spaces. It is a threat from the co-workers or as they talked about in their definition, clients, customers and visitors are also included in that definition. Rob Sylvester: And that's a great point, and that's exactly what the OSHA standards talk about, the letters of interpretation, I should say that they will use the general duty clause, you know. OSHA has come out with various resources and I will touch more about on those later on. But they developed, you know, enforcement procedures and what they should be doing for workplace violence. And again, you know, those are great resources to help develop a program. And many use the OSHA aspect to kind of drive the reason why they need to do this. But let's get back to what it's really about. It's about providing a safe workplace for people that you see daily. Many times, those causes you talked about, it could be domestic violence. You know, people have substance abuse issues, emotional problems. Again, this is anybody that you're exposed to in the workplace. One of the big ones we see is patients to caregivers. More and more OSHA and state entities are getting involved in workplace violence when it comes to patient to caregiver. So that's one that really needs to be concentrated on from a health care perspective. When we get outside the health care perspective, we're talking about, you know, retail establishments and other late-night businesses, hospitality, disputes with customers, robberies, those are all considered workplace violence also. So, you know, what do our employers what do we have in place to deal with these things, whether it's, you know, training, mitigation, response and recovery? That's, you know, from an emergency management perspective, really, that's how we should be approaching these things. Peter Koch: Yeah. And it's it's really about the preparation. So, reaction is certainly one component of the plan. What do you do when it happens? But a lot of this is is really looking at it from a proactive standpoint. How do you how do you help people recognize where the boundaries are? How do you put things in place? So, when an employee recognizes that they do feel threatened, that they have a place to go or something to do. I can tell you a story. I was at an account. Oh, quite a few years ago now, really, before workplace violence became such a hot button topic. And I was sitting there talking to the risk manager. We were having a conversation and her phone was just blowing up and started asking her, so what's going on? Because she was getting a little stressed out about what was happening and what was going on at that time. They had and this was a hospitality establishment. They had a housekeeper who was who had reported last week that her her estranged boyfriend, that she had a restraining order against him. And she got a call from the estranged boyfriend that he was going to show up at work. And it's a fairly large establishment. It's not just a single hotel where you have one entrance and one exit. There's multiple places of contact. And it was they were reacting to a potential for workplace violence. And at that point in time, all they had in place was some basic human resources, policies and procedures, but no real practice in place for what does the employee do? What is the what do the other employees do? How did they manage it? How did they handle it? And it was a pretty stressful situation for everyone around. Their solution at the time was, I think, very appropriate. They they they called the sheriff and the sheriff came in and actually removed the individual when he came onto the property. However, it's not always that clear cut. So, there's a lot of detail that has to go into the plan to make sure that you can be prepared for some reasonably anticipated situations that could happen at the workplace. Rob Sylvester: Excellent point, Pete, and I can tell you, you know, when it comes to domestic violence that generally does carry into the workplace because people, especially those working nights or evenings in my past, I've dealt with that many a times and I think one of the gro- the one of the ways to handle it is making sure that employees are comfortable and understand that there is a way to report these things in advance. Going to your story, it sounds like they responded quite well, but did they prepare that employee? Did they even prepare the workplace on really more of a prevention? One of the things I've seen where it helps our programs and has been successful is getting people to not only understand, as we talked about earlier, understand those warning signs, but understand reporting things in advance, such as maybe this individual could have reported to human resources or their supervisor, somebody they're comfortable with, that there was a restraining order in place. So and, you know, take that a step further, depending on the culture, depending on the the organization is making sure other people understand that this person on the other side of the fence, that person with that domestic issue or somebody else identified, you know, should not be at the workplace. So sometimes those things, you know, could be identified in advance. But it goes back to training your employees on your process, training them on recognizing and getting them comfortable to understand that as an employer, we are here for you. And, you know, putting OSHA aside and yes, we have to create the same workplace. But let's think about the people. You know, it truly is about those people and how we should be working together as a team. Peter Koch: Yeah, totally. You're right on the money. And you talk about training and preparation. So, the typical training component that most employers have in place stems back to the harassment policy and that came from the sexual harassment policy. So, you have this sexual harassment training that I remember sitting through one before I before I came to my current position. And there are a lot of chuckles. There are a lot of nods. It really wasn't taken very seriously. It was done to the check the box, but it really wasn't always done to to prepare the individual for the potential. And the the effects of of training like that really puts a stigma on bringing some of those concerns into to your supervisor, to the employer, because, well, the employee doesn't feel like it's one, taken seriously. And two, they're not always really clear about what the what it is that they should bring forward. And then who they should bring it to. And then even after that. Talk about the supervisor and what training does the supervisor have to receive that comment or the question or the report from that employee? There's a there's a lot to that. Can you speak a little bit to like what kind of training would be helpful for an employer to put together for workplace violence prevention and maybe even touch then on how do they take that to the supervisors as well? What would be important for those supervisors to know? Rob Sylvester: Sure Pete, great questions. I think that's where a lot of times organizations need the most improvement. You know, we can conduct a hazard assessment backing up to that point, as you know, assessing your organization and having key stakeholders involved. And if you want, we'll touch on that later and just address the training. Now, you know, all employees need to be hired, you know? Ah, excuse me. All employees need to be trained on aspects of workplace violence. It should be a minimum at hire and then annually, of course. And as needed, if you start identifying trends, employees at all levels from frontline worker all the way through up senior management team need to be higher or need to be trained. Excuse me. They need to be trained on the workplace violence trends. They may be seeing in ways to mitigate those, you know, as you said, train on the recognition and reporting in accordance with the policy and procedures. You know, employees should be trained on watching for signals that might be associated with potential workplace violence that ranges from verbally people expressing their anger and frustration. You know, that's quite forthright. You know, people in your face or saying, I'm coming back. You know, there was recently a school age child actually at school use their finger to form a gun at somebody at school. And that was a workplace violence in excuse me, an incident of violence in schools. And depending on how you look at these things, body language with threatening gestures, you know, if somebody shakes a fist at you at work, you know, some of us may just shake that off, OK? Rob's having a bad day, but if that is something that makes an employee uncomfortable, that's something they need to recognize. They need to know how to report that to the appropriate individuals at their workplace. You know, the signs of drug or alcohol use. You know, again, we were on a work together. We want a safe workplace. And regardless of the type of facility we work at or the class of business, you know, employees, especially supervisors and again, you know, organizations have to decide how they're going to roll out the training and or what level what employees and what job titles get both supervisors, you know, signs of drug or alcohol use. If people are impaired at work, you know, is that something that has been a trend for that person, you know, coming in continuously day after day and they're under the influence? You know, that's a time they kick into high mode of maybe the employee assistance program. Maybe they need help. And, you know, you're heading off that that train that's just going over like the old movies and an off the overpass or over the cliff because the tracks are broken. You know, just recognizing those things, you know, and of course, you know, things like presence of weapons and things like that. That's that's quite, quite easy to see. But in addition to those watching for those signals, we need to make sure that we as employees are maintaining our own behavior. That's going to help defuse situations. You know, how many times have we we start feeling hot under the collar because somebody is yelling at us, they're yelling at us, and we may engage them verbally and that just may escalate and continue escalating things when really we need to take that step back. We need to make sure our employees understand to take that step back, present that calm attitude, you know, show that you care about their their dilemma. Show that you care about them as a person, you know, as we as we continue down that road of mutual respect. I always talk about mutual respect, regardless of what I'm doing in life. I try to recognize mutual respect. We talk a lot about, you know, treat people how you would want to be treated. And I always say, you know what? Treat people how they want to be treated. So, again, you're going to help diffuse situations by not matching those threats, not being demanding, you know, acknowledge how people feel. If somebody is having a bad day and they're getting in your face or making threats or showing other signs of potential workplace violence, you know, try to diffuse the situation. And many times, employers don't do that. Healthcare, when I say they don't do that, that's about the training aspect. You know, health care does a great job of it. They do a lot of de-escalation training. But other classes of business may not they may not understand the need to. And I think that is very important aspect of when you're conducting that hazard assessment it's really recognizing not only the locations, the physical plant aspects, but understanding that there's other column triggers or other situations that may occur that are unique to your business, whether it's cause of the as you mentioned earlier, exits, you know, limited exits, limited entrances and things like that. So, again, each organization is going to be slightly different, and that's why we need to ensure that people are conducting a hazard assessment and then rolling into the training. And you mentioned earlier is training for supervisors. You know, take that to the next level. Making sure that supervisors truly understand and support their people, not just from the initial and annual training, but supporting their individuals. So, so their employees, their direct reports truly feel safe coming to them about a situation. We may say, well, it's just you know, I'm not going to worry about Rob today. You know, he's just blowing off steam. Well, again, they should feel safe to go to their supervisor and have that dialogue and say, you know what? This is the third time this week or it might be the first time, depending on how it is that Rob's been acting like this. And I'm really worried for him. And at this point, I'm worried about my safety. Peter Koch: Yeah. Those are those are really insightful comments, too. When you're talking, I'm connecting. There is a responsibility on the employer to have to assess their workplace. So not for just physical hazards that the employee might be exposed to, but some of the trends that might be occurring or unique challenges that their employees might have to manage. It could be, well, like we said, a physical plant thing because the exits are way to get out in the event of a workplace violence event is is challenging. The exits are in challenging locations or there is only one or two entrances or exits that you can that you can actually get to. Or it could be that it's a high stress situation. There is a lot of productivity going on. There's a lot of demand for quality assurance that happens within a particular area. For whatever reason. It could be time, a season. It could be the product itself. It could be deadlines that are happening. It could be because you are, you're actually dealing with a human resource, like you said, within health care or even hospitality or the stakes are are a little higher. So, the employer responsibility there. Then there's the employee responsibility who has to, you know, treat the other employees with dignity and respect. So, they need to be able to recognize that the workplace isn't the place to air out the dirty laundry to express that frustration. But we're humans and sometimes it happens. So that brings us to the supervisor and the training that the supervisor needs. And this was an interesting connection, at least for me, that the supervisor needs training on how to be a supervisor, because in order to to have, a, an environment where an employee feels safe to bring something up to their supervisor, that supervisor has to be a good supervisor, not just a supervisor for productivity or really good at the job that they came from, but really good at working with the people that are around them and that will help them address the particular situation that comes up and be able to start the de-escalation process. So, lots of lots of different components to what the employer has to do, the training that the employee needs, and certainly a multi-faceted training regime for that supervisor. Rob Sylvester: Definitely. Great point, Pete. You know, we always say we need to make sure our supervisors understand, and we make sure that they are a good manager. But as you said, we aren't generally end up talking about making the widgets or understanding policies and enforcing procedures when really they need to have better training on crucial conversations with people and how to deal differently with people, whether it's the leadership series or other training. I think it's just a great point to make that, you know, supervisors do need, as they call them, soft skills. They need those soft skills. And when it comes to workplace violence, because we're dealing with people with personal problems, substance abuse, emotional issues, I mean, we didn't even mention financial difficulties. You know, number one, one of the number one concerns of families today are financial difficulties. And as you said earlier, is bringing those things to work. You know, we shouldn't be doing that, but we are human. So, things follow us. We can't just put that wall up and block things. So, we really need to understand that from a supervisory level, definitely going with leadership and supervisor training really is critical to the success of any program and any organization. Peter Koch: Definitely. Definitely. I think we're at a place right now within the podcast. We're going to take a quick break and we're going to we'll we'll be back in just a few minutes. Very good. [ commercial ] Peter Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast. Today, we're talking with Rob Sylvester safety management consultant with MEMIC. So, let's jump back in to some more questions. Before the break, we were talking about the prevalence of workplace violence, where it is the different components of it. What makes up workplace violence? The definition, how really OSHA might get into it. It's how the employer might see the employees and then the supervisor. We also talked about training that would need to be done once we've determined what what what we're what we're exposed to or what trends might be in the workplace. While we were discussing those things, Rob, you you had mentioned numerous times, assessing the workplace, identifying what the challenges are. So, can you talk a little bit about what that assessment entails, what an employer might need to do to determine the points of workplace violence that they would have to manage? Rob Sylvester: Sure, Pete. It's a great question. You know, we can have all the policies and procedures in place and training in place. Before we get to that, we really have to conduct that hazard assessment, as you mentioned, and going into detail with assessing an organization. You know, I always tell people start with your key stakeholders. You know, that's going to vary by business location, business model. Are they traveling? Where are they going? Do we have union versus non-union? What type of relationships there are with not only union, but local and federal law enforcement? I always tell people that call about workplace violence, use your subject matter experts. And to me, that truly is your local law enforcement. Many organizations will bring in local law enforcement to conduct or assist with an assessment. You're the subject matter expert on your facility, but if that's your responding resources, then they definitely want to be in from the ground floor. Some organizations actually not only bring when the police come in, the law enforcement officers, they will actually come in with a fire department and possibly E.M.S.. Again, it depends on the business model location and those relationships. So, I always encourage people to look at that from that angle. You know, anytime you assess your organization, whether it's for workplace violence, whether it's for as, you mentioned earlier confined spaces, machine guarding, whatever it may be, you want to ensure you have those frontline staff participating with you. You can use screening surveys, you know, culture surveys, different questionnaires to get feedback on the organization and how you're dealing with workplace violence. And in health care, some states actually mandate that frontline staff are participating. Just make sure you know your state and local requirements. You know, when you're assessing organization, not only are you looking at physical plant, which we're going to get more into, but you have to collect that historical data if you can collect near misses and what we think of as minor occurrences and really collect that information from various data sources, depending on what you're tracking and how you're tracking things. Again, some may start off with just things. I'll call it anecdotal, but, you know, not formal reporting. But as you start doing this hazard assessment, whether it's with your safety committee or you've formed another a workplace violence committee or response team. You know, you may start hearing things. You may not have an actual report that says this was workplace violence because, again, there may have been no accident. There may have been no incident or injury that occurred. So, you may not get a formal report. But as you start looking at this and assessing your organization, using surveys or getting out on the floor and talking to people, you may find out that there has been, call them near misses, but there's been situations where workplace violence has occurred. Again, we're not just talking about physical assault. And that's where I think we missed some data points because people say all workplace violence. Now this is safe. Well, how about when Pete was all upset and he was leaving one day on a Friday, he thought he got shorted on his paycheck and or he got a day off for violating unsafe work practice or I should say, violating a safety practice. And he was shaking his fist as a supervisor. Oh, well, nothing happened. Well, you know what? Again, that's a workplace violence. So, as we start looking at data, we really need to be looking at all aspects of it, both formal and informal. You know, getting into the physical location assessment. You know, it can be some things like, you know, locks. Do we have appropriate locks, keeping life safety code in mind? Of course. But do we need to add locks? Do we need to, a lot of facilities are actually putting locks on bathroom doors because that will now be a safe place? So, you might have a multi stall bathroom or you might have an office that normally doesn't have a lock on it all. But now that might be a safe place and might be a refuge point. So, again, you want to find out where you currently have these things. And then as you start developing your program, your committee, and again, using your key stakeholders like local law enforcement, take those recommendations on where you will have to reinforce some of your physical plan aspects. Lighting. Lighting is a big one. We talk about it a lot from a slips, trips, falls, exposure. But lighting at night, I always encourage employers, regardless of size and class of business and location. Visit your facility at nighttime. You know, many places will have timers, but they don't change them when daylight savings time kicks in. So, the timer is off by an hour. Many places have older lighting that as it gets older, it gets reduced effectiveness. So again, look at lighting. Look at lighting and parking lots. Look at lighting in approach paths and exits. It really can be key. It makes people feel safe. I mean, how many times do we walking? And we notice that is dark out and the lights are not on in the parking lot where you park during the day. You know, we start our heart starts racing and we get very nervous about. OK. This is doesn't feel right. Something doesn't feel right. So, they get to safety very quickly, hopefully. But again, look at the lighting. You know, do you have, and do you need sign in and out procedures? A lot of larger organizations truly have sign in and out procedures. It could be anything from fire safety perspective. So, you know who's in the building. But go into the world of workplace violence again. But and have those sign in, sign out procedures. Know who's in your building. Identification. You know, you have contractors working in your facility. When you start looking at that and you may depending on level and size of your business, you may get to the point where you work with third party vendors or you might work with your local law enforcement, as I mentioned earlier. And they may do what we call probing attacks or an audit where, you know, one of my favorite ones used to be as contractors throw in a hard hat or grab a clipboard. And I always joke that you can get in just about anywhere. No I.D. needed securing a valuables, of course. That's another aspect of, you know, just general overall safety and security is making sure valuables are secured. Critical infrastructures. Organizations need to look at what is critical to them, what is critical to keeping them in business, whether they have generators, emergency power, natural gas, I.T. I mean, how many businesses, if their I.T. were to go out, let's say a contractor was out front digging and they cut the fiber optic or other Internet lines to their facility. Those are critical infrastructures. So, again, although a lot of this is outside workers, workplace violence excuse me, outside of workplace violence, these are true critical infrastructure aspects that need to be looked at in my past life. I actually had the critical infrastructure response team or excuse me, critical infrastructure evaluation team in New York actually come out. It was a combination of military, both federal and state, and they actually did a physical assessment of our facility as a with critical infrastructures in mind, because, again, yes, workplace violence goes from bullying and harassment all the way through. Active shooter situations. But if somebody wanted to go the route of, you know, best excuse the expression, but bang for their buck, you know, they may want to sabotage your facility. So, think about that. What are our critical infrastructures, and do we have a business continuity plan in place? So, again, as we start peeling that onion, just like everything else with safety, you know, yes, we start talking about a lot of things that add on the surface. You say, what's that got to do with workplace violence? But when you think about it, workplace violence has so many different forms that you really need to look at your facility overall, including critical infrastructure. Peter Koch: So really what you're talking about here, too, is integration of. This the workplace violence plan into your business plan. And if we back up, if we start where we just ended for business continuity practices. So, what happens? I mean, you think about it from a storm perspective. Yeah. There's a big storm there's a hurricane. There's an ice storm. There's a tornado. There's a fire. How do we keep the business in business when this happens? The same thing happens when there's a workplace violence event from a critical infrastructure standpoint two, two divergent roads here. One, if the workplace violence starts with manipulating or damaging those critical infrastructures, how do you work around it? But even even aside from that, if you're going to need those critical infrastructures to communicate workplace violence to the outside so that you get response in, what are those things that need to be up and running? Because what happens if you're I.T. system crashes not related to the workplace violence incident, but you have voice over IP phone system. How do you get out? How does it work? What happens if this at the same moment that there is a workplace violence incident, you're in the middle of a storm. I mean that when we start to add environmental challenges within the situation, workplace stress can go up, which can contribute to a workplace violence event that outside of the environmental conditions might have been de-escalated relatively easy, but easily. But now it can't. Places to put your valuables, secure your valuables. Where do employees put that? Where do you secure your business valuables? How how easy or difficult is it to get to those areas? And then, oh, gosh, a critical part, employee I.D. how do you know who's in the building, who's not in the building? So, all this gets integrated into your your business plan. So, it's a critical part of that emergency response plan. Right, from hazard identification. So where are the where the vulnerabilities of the business? And then using those stakeholders to find out where they feel vulnerable when you were talking about the hazard assessment process. Rob, what I heard there was trying to find out from them where the vulnerabilities are. Where are those informal events that may have not been reported where we just sort of pushed it under the rug because, oh, it's just that person. No, it's just that person. Or they were having a bad day, but or. Really weird. Where did the employees feel vulnerable, whether their work work, remote employees, traveling employees or employees that are stationed directly at your facilities? So those are really great points. So currently we we talked about step one is hazard assessment, talking about what's happening, where the potential for workplace violence could happen. Second, you talked about physical plant evaluation, identification of safe places. Do you have the appropriate locking mechanisms to to lock down the facility if necessary or provide a safe location for your employees to go? If there is a workplace violence situation, lighting, parking areas, making sure that those are all safe and secure and there's ways for employees to communicate and then employee identification, knowing who's in your building, whether it's sign in, sign out, swipe and swipe out, identifying who's supposed to be in the building through some sort of identification process. I love that description. You put a hardhat and a clipboard on somebody and they can get in just about anywhere. And it's it's true. It's kind of human nature. We look at we look at someone who looks to be official and you're going to give them access because you have no reason to think not. But in today's day and age, whoever needs to be in the building should be in the building. And those people who aren't don't need to be in the building and they should be prevented from accessing it through means other than the appropriate means. Go to the front entrance, talk to the the the security person, go in through your main administrat- administrative entrance instead of one of the employee entrances. All all really good ideas to step through valuable securing critical infrastructures. And then finally, business continuity plan. Are there any other steps to take in order to or to to develop a an employee or a workplace violence prevention plan, Rob? Rob Sylvester: Great recap, Pete. And what a great way to bring it full circle. You know, along with that hazard assessment, we're looking, as you said, access control, you know, limit entrances. That's usually the easier part, but control access if possible. And as we get into recapping all the steps before we get there, you know, ensure we're developing emergency alarms, monitoring systems if possible. We talked about lighting earlier, but going with environmental design, depending on the business, you know, security devices such as cameras, smaller businesses, may their security devices may be locked doors might be one of those ring style doorbells where they have an air phone style camera at the front door to limit people's access. You know, we go back to emergency management, as you said earlier, is training, mitigation, response and recovery. So as we start rolling that, you know, wrapping that up, you talked about that hazard assessment and using local police departments and other subject matter experts, you know, that can be led by your workplace violence committee or your safety committee. And that same committee would be responsible for not only conducting but also reviewing and developing plans for mitigation and response. They would develop a policy which we have touched on earlier. And again, that policy truly needs to be what I call scalable. Many times, we do a workplace violence policy. I can't tell you the number of times I get a policy to review and they'll be like, here's our workplace violence policy. I'm like, okay, great. This is only about assaults. This is about mass shootings. What do you have for bullying and harassment? And many times they may have an employee handbook and it might have, you know, a paragraph about what to do if you feel bullying in the workplace report H.R. You know, take it a step further. Have and have they completed training on identifying what is bullying? I have this conversation with my 8-year-old. All the time, soon to be 9 or 19 as he likes to think he is. But, you know, oh, so-and-so is being bullied at school. And when you talk about it, you know, do we really know the definition of bullying? You know, harassment, assault, assault is a big one. Varies state by state. Harassment versus assault. So, as we start developing that policy, we want to start with those definitions. We want to roll that policy into understanding how people should report. And we mentioned it earlier, but number one is no form of workplace violence will be tolerated, period, end of conversation, because if we don't roll that policy out, role that training out and truly reinforce and enforce that policy, where workplace violence won't be tolerated. The program's not going to work. The program will not work. People will not be feeling comfortable of reporting workplace violence situations. They're not going to feel, as you said earlier, comfortable coming to work. And that can not only impact your business. But it's going to impact the people and vice versa. We all know as leaders that, you know, once morale starts going down, the tube can be very difficult to stop. So, we want to be proactive. And part of that truly is, is having a policy that not only people understand, but it truly is going to work. And that's why you need those key stakeholders, both external and, of course, internal frontline workers and others on that committee or policy development. Once you have that policy, Pete, I would say, you know, develop training employees at all levels. You know, some organizations or I should say some classes of business do this all the time. You know, health care is a big one. You know, they're doing different levels of training. You might have entry level training. And then as you start getting up in different departments, you're going to see various levels of training. It just increases, the time commitment increases, and it really is valuable. So again, develop that training based on their exposure. What hazards are they dealing with the public, you know, a front office person or our gatekeepers versus somebody in the back room that generally doesn't deal with that everybody needs workplace violence training. But it's just at what level? And then as part of that policy, that plan, and program we're looking at is reporting to who do they report to? You know, how do they report? Is this a verbal report, which is never a good thing without follow up of documentation? But it'll initial reporting verbally report to your supervisor and then the supervisor must take the following steps, really have that roadmap for people. So, they understand reporting, they understand expectations at all level. You know, OSHA has a lot of good guidance out there. And I recommend people review that and look at, you know, that work, developing a workplace violence response team on that could be the same committee we referenced earlier, but their job would be to evaluate not only the plan, but looking at that data. Look at the reports at a facility I worked at in the past, believe it or not. When we first kicked this off, we were meeting weekly, Pete. That's how often we because we had so many reported. And it was very cumbersome. But I will tell you that the employee reception, when you have over 3000 employees, the employee reception of this was very well received because they we truly showed that we we had considered all aspects of workplace violence and we were very responsive. Now, again, we have so many different employers out there listening today. That may range from just a few people all the way through thousands in multi locations. So, again, you know, using the resources that are in the safety director or utilizing the OSHA resources, depending on what class of business you're working in. There there's so many different resources. And again, it should be scalable to your organization. So really needs to be tailored by you to your organization. Because, again, every business is going to be different, whether it's the the culture we always talk about or it's the environmental design of the facility, you know, the physical layout. Each one is going to be different. And truly those steps we just talked about. That's the way to put a workplace violence program together. Peter Koch: Those are that's great advice. Kind of walking through all those steps and it might seem overwhelming to small business owner that might only have a few employees or even it could be even more overwhelming for a business owner or a corporation that has, like you said, hundreds or thousands of employees and multiple locations, because there's a lot to it. What I kept coming back to is the scalability starts with the hazard assessment and really spending doing your due diligence to understand what your threats and liabilities are at that hazard assessment. So, looking at all those different aspects, again, looking at the your stakeholders, so where where do employees feel threatened? Where is the data? If you do have a reporting process and then the lot of the the assets that you have to bring in like your outside response agencies and what they can do to help assist you in in that event or provide you some guidance, they go, hey, you didn't check this out. This is an area that you should look into as a potential liability or threat for workplace violence, physical plant. In that assessment. How you control your employees in and out. How you control people that aren't employees in and out. And then again, back to critical infrastructure. And how do you keep the business going in that response? I guess this to sum those parts up you, you said it I think pretty well training, mitigation, response and recovery. And if we put the zero at the beginning of that or the first thing at the beginning of that before you can have training is that hazard assessment, policy development, trained folks on the the policies and procedures that you have. I think mitigation is ongoing training. So, it's not just the initial and annual, but it is ongoing training about how what do you do in the event of a workplace violence issue? What are the definitions of workplace violence? How do you manage some of the challenges with another employee? Those all might need to be part of the training plan, depending on how your hazard assessment works out. And then, of course, response. What do you do? What do you do as an employee who might feel threatened? What do you do as an employee who witnesses something? And then what do you do as a supervisor when you hear it, or it's reported to you? How do you respond as a supervisor and then how does the how does the company respond in order to, one, protect those employees in the event of a physical, violent act that's coming into your facility or protect those employees from the emotional issues that are going on with a non-physical threat that's happening within the facility? And then finally, recovery, what do you do in the aftermath of the problem, whether it's big or small? Just a couple of employees or one employee to another or a large mass shooting event and a tragedy. Rob Sylvester: Definitely. Great recap, Pete. And you know, those four-phase emergency management, like you said, that training is part of the preparedness level. You know, you have the preparedness, response, recovery and a mitigation, but preparing people. And, you know, we it seems like we generally skip a lot of the steps when it comes to these types of programs and emergency management. A lot say, oh we can respond very well. But truly, you know, what have we done? We can't respond if we haven't taught people. We haven't prepared people. So, I think your recap just really brings it all full circle. And I appreciate that. Peter Koch: Sure. Hey. So, we talked a little bit about some of the resources that are out there and again, overwhelming the number of things that someone might have to do if they're starting from square one. So, where do people typically go to when they're looking for resources? They go to their good friend Google and they end up Googling workplace violence prevention plan enter. And I just did that. And you get well over 20 million results. So how do you know what to start with? Like if you're looking for a resource for hazard assessment or you're looking for resource for physical plan evaluation, or you're looking for a template that has components of your workplace violence prevention plan in it that you can use as a guide to developing your own. Where do you go? What do you? Where would you look for those things? Rob Sylvester: That's a great question, Pete. You know, Google's my best friend. We know that we've been we've been best friends for many years. But depends on your class of business. A lot of times you'll have trade associations, you know, whether it's association manufacturers or others, you know, OSHA does have a lot of good stuff. You know, they have it for health care and social service workers, hospitals, of course, you know, taxis are for-hire drivers. They have one from 2009 for a late-night retail establishments. So, again, there's a lot of resources from OSHA. But at the same time, there's the American Society of Safety Professionals, Healthcare Accrediting Bodies, American American Nurse Nursing Association and others like the National Safety Council. So, they it is so very overwhelming. And I encourage people, again, start with their local law enforcement and start with trade associations. And then, of course, we have the safety director within our safety director are presentations. We even have past recorded webinars on workplace violence for general industry then we have them for healthcare. And then we went into acute care. Also, in there, we have the workplace violence plan template. So, there's actually a workplace violence prevention plan template that talks about starting off with on that hazard assessment and tips and considerations and going on through. So, it's a great template to start looking at workplace violence. So, safety director has multitude of resources MEMIC Minutes. So, there is a lot of stuff out there. So, I encourage people to use those resources in the safety director, their local law enforcement and then any trade associations they may belong to. Peter Koch: Perfect. I think that's a that's a great list of different resources. As a supervisor or a business owner, I want to know what I need to do. And again, like you said, it can't just be. I pulled this off the shelf. I bought this from whatever safety company online. And now I've got this workplace violence prevention book that I paid a lot of money for, but it's not truly specific to your company. So those are the key points. And using those trade associations, pulling your loc, local law, law enforcement and emergency response entities in, you can customize some of that information to get help with customization. And then the safety director, there are ton of resources out there. So that's www.MEMIC.safety.com. If you're looking to get on to that and check out some of the MEMIC specific resources that we have out there as well. So, a ton of resources that people can look that are good and then can be specific to their their industry. That's fantastic. Hey, so that about wraps up this weeks. Safety Experts podcast. So, I really appreciate your sharing those your expertise with us, Rob. Thank you very much for all those those comments. But before we close, I got to throw one question. That you you might not be prepared for, but I'm a throw it at you anyway. So last question. Why? Why is safety important to you? This is this is you've made a career of this in some form and another over the last however many years. So why is safety important to you? Rob Sylvester: That's a great question, Pete. You know, I guess the easy way to summarize that' I care about people. It's the people taking care of one another. I mentioned earlier mutual respect. And I think that's what we all need more of in our day to day lives, whether it's at work, whether it's at home, just dealing with other people is mutual respect for one another. And a lot of situations in our our own world would improve. But when you say why are you in safety for over 25 years? It is truly because I want to help people. I want to be there for others. I want to help others learn. And I truly think as a safety professional, we have an amazing opportunity impact to help. Those we're around in creating not only the physical plant aspect and safety, but make it better, make people healthier, keep them at work, get them rolling for retirement, because let's face it, that's the end state for all of us. So, a great question. Peter Koch: That's perfect. That's per. That's why I love you, man. That's that's great. So, you think about it. We started this conversation earlier today talking about the headlines of all the people who were affected by workplace violence. And then we jumped into some of the policies and procedures. We talked about OSHA. We talked about compliance. But it comes back down to what you said is most important to you and also to me as a safety professional is the people. And if we can keep the focus on the people, then we can end up keeping more people safe in the workplace. So excellent points. Thank you again, Rob, for joining us. And to all of our listeners out there, I thank you again. So today we've been talking with Rob Sylvester, Safety Management consultant with MEMIC about workplace violence on the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast. If you have any questions for Rob or we'd like to hear more about a particular topic on our podcast. Email [email protected]. Also, check out our show notes at MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find links to resources for a deeper dive into this topic. And check out our Web site www.MEMIC.com/podcast where you can find our podcast archive. And while you're there, sign up for our safety net blog so you never miss any of our articles or safety news updates. If you haven't done so already, I'd really appreciate it if you took a minute or two to review us on Stitcher, I-Tunes or whatever podcast service that you've found us on. And if you've already done that. Thank you. Because it really helps us spread the word. Please consider sharing this show with a business associate friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. And as always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, this is Peter Kotch reminding you that listening to the MEMIC Safety Experts podcast is good but using what you learned is even better.     Mentioned/Resources/Links Veteran Engineer shot and killed 12 in Virginia Beach, VA - https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/01/us/virginia-beach-suspect/index.html Sous Chef stabbed to death in Peabody, MA - https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/08/30/changs-employee-who-was-stabbed-death-worker-was-year-old-from-salem/Ub3hxrqfLPBpjb9WozlPQK/story.html Man fired from Henry Pratt Company returns and shoots five - https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/02/16/man-kills-five-warehouse-shooting-spree-shortly-after-being-fired-illinois-police-say/ National Safety Council - https://www.nsc.org/safety-training?utm_campaign=DSA&utm_term=&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_grp=68218917512&hsa_acc=3965156914&hsa_ad=338185148306&hsa_cam=1732015670&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=dsa-670781419821&hsa_kw=&hsa_ver=3&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_mt=b&gclid=Cj0KCQiAt_PuBRDcARIsAMNlBdpJD3PHzcwf7u_LBqGRQe7QqHKRb6GXvtUvSoRNfUpK9XL4kXuYvRIaAhr0EALw_wcB OSHA - https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/workplaceviolence/ Employee Assistance Program (EAP) - http://workplacementalhealth.org/Mental-Health-Topics/Employee-Assistance-Programs MEMIC’s Safety Director - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/about-safety-director American Society of Safety Professionals - https://www.assp.org/ Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations - https://www.jointcommission.org/ American Nurses Association - http://www.nationalhealthcouncil.org/about-nhc/members/american-nurses-association MEMIC’s Safety Net Blog - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-net-blog MEMIC’s Safety Experts Podcast - https://www.memic.com/podcast Email us at: [email protected]