Addressing workplace violence requires shifting the focus from the individual employee level and incident response to systemic, organizational level accountability. Research shows that treating violence as an isolated or expected “part of the job” fails to address causation and the root systemic failures, such as inadequate staffing, profit-driven management models, and a lack of senior management engagement and accountability. https://psnet.ahrq.gov/perspective/addressing-workplace-violence-and-creating-safer-workplace
To fix the structural disconnect and focus interdiction and intervention at the right levels, organizations and policymakers must target three specific tiers:
1. Executive and Governance Level (Systemic Accountability)
- Lead with Policy, Not Just Training and Technology: Executive leadership often treats violence as a training issue for front-line workers and technology as prevention. Instead, leadership must pivot toward implementing zero incident tolerance structural guidelines in support of zero-tolerance, establishing transparent compliance metrics, auditing workplace violence prevention program top-down and assessing the physical environment.
- Remove Institutional Neglect: True mitigation prevention and mitigation measures require executive leaders to directly link management performance reviews to safety outcomes, eliminating the cultural minimization that often shields organizations from liability.
- Fund Safer Instructure Design: Executives must allocate budgets specifically for security and safety infrastructure – such as proximity alarms, structural barriers, alert, notification and communications technology, predictive and prevention software, customized security guidelines, and increased security personnel – rather than prioritizing profit-driven management models.
2. Operational and Managerial Level (Culture and Reporting)
- Dismantle Barriers to Reporting: Managers must actively break down the belief that reporting is useless or that it will cause administrative retaliation.
- Standardize What Constitutes Workplace Violence: Middle management must align teams on a single definition of what constitutes workplace violence, definition of violence that validates psychological abuse, verbal threats, bullying and harassment ensuring these acts are treated with same weight as physical assaults.
- Execute Comprehensive Follow-up: Operational leaders must move past the immediate crisis response. They need to establish mandatory mental health resources, peer support groups, and transparent tracking to show staff exactly what organizational actions were taken against perpetrators. Such actions instill trust and confidence in management’s ability to provide for workforce safety and security.
3. Structural and Legislative Level (Macro Protection)
- Legislative Mandates: True change requires strict regulatory oversight. Passing federal and state laws – such as the healthcare violence mitigation bills championed by the American Nurses Association (ANA) and California SB 553 Workplace Violence Prevention Training – forces employers to meet baseline safety-security standards or face strict penalties. https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/why-80-of-incidents-of-workplace-violence-go-unreported
- Acknowledge the True Economic and Societal Burden: Workplace violence costs billions annually in employee turnover, sick leave, and worker compensation not to mention exorbitant legal costs. State and national bodies must view workplace security and workforce safety as a public health priority, linking systemic funding to the implementation of verified violence prevention programs.
In conclusion, addressing workplace violence prevention concerns, senior management must build a culture of safety and listen to employees without fear of punishment. Prevention must become a top-down focus with accountability and responsibility up and down the organizations and across functional line.
About the Author:
Felix P. Nater, CSC is the President and Owner of Nater Associates Ltd. a Workplace Security Management Consulting firm specializing in Workplace Violence Prevention, Violence Response and Crisis Management. Felix is a Certified Security Consultant, and former U.S. Postal Inspector and is a nationally recognized speaker, trainer, coach and co-author of ‘Combating workplace Violence: Creating and Maintaining Safe Work Environments”. He differentiates services Nater Associates Ltd. delivers through a highly specialized, practitioner-based “top-down, inside-out” approach to workplace security strategy and workplace violence prevention, shaped by decades of direct, hands-on-experiences. His consulting practice serves manufacturing, processing, production, utility companies and public housing organizations seeking credible, practical, and sustainable prevention strategies.
His preferred title is “Human Resource – Security Workplace Violence Prevention Consultant”.
His Unique Selling Proposition is – Helping organizations implement and manage workplace security with a focus on workplace violence prevention.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”.
Contact:
Info@naterassociates.com
Office: 704-784-0260
Website: www.naterassociates.com
