Workplace violence, the US Department of Labor (DOL) reported, is one of the top four causes of workplace injuries in the US and over two million workers are victims of this type of occupational hazard each year. The occupations identified by DOL as being of higher risk to workplace violence include healthcare professionals, customer service agents, persons handling cash and dealing with the public as well as occupations providing service and care to the public. More often these days, the evening news is covering stories where workplace violence has visited a business in the local community bringing it both tragedy and sadness. As the story unfolds over the days and weeks, it unfortunately discloses there were early indications and warnings of the person’s behavior that others failed to recognize and report. When the tragic event occurred, the business and its employees did not know how to react to minimize the loss. With this type of event becoming more prevalent in our society, the business owner should be thinking how to go about lowering his risk to this type of event and asking would his or her workforce be able to identify behavior that could lead to workplace violence and how to report it. How would their business respond if tomorrow it was visited by workplace violence? Do they have a plan in place for such a crisis and have they trained their employees on the early warning signs and how to react?
Source: Industry News
