Essay Example on Workplace Violence: Understanding & Mitigating Factors

Introduction

Statistically, 2 million cases of workplace violence are reported annually. In the recent past, it has presented itself as a significant challenge for organizations' development. However, several organizations confronted with workplace violence are uncertain on measures to implement to curb the adversities of workplace violence. Thus, violent understanding conducts in places of work, and existing mitigating factors is imperative.

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According to Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) workplace violence refers to any act which may include; assault, coercion, harassment or any behaviour which is likely to cause disruption or poses as a threat happening in place of work. Over the years, workplace violence has been a subject of concern due to increasing incidences of violence in workstations (Reese & Eidson, 2014). It has caused more harm than good to most organization across the world. Most notable types that occur in workplaces include; Criminal intent, Customer or Client, Co-employees, Domestic relationship.

Types of Workplace violence

In assessing prospective violence in places of work, OSHA evaluated four types that posed as potential determinants (Yodaiken & Bennett, 2011, p. 1198). Finding their relationship with work, developing mitigating factors would address a more significant percentage of the violent acts reported in workstations.

• Criminal Intent. Well understood as a third party (malicious individual) gains access to the working premise to commit robbery or a criminal activity.
• Customer or Client. The offender can be the worker of the organization or the client seeking services.
• Co-employees. In this scenario workplace violence may be in form of assault between the employees or employees and their seniors.
• Domestic Relationship. One of the offenders works as an employee to the organization but has a relationship with the perpetrator.

Prevention Strategies of Workplace violence

Understanding the types of violence acts likely to occur at places of work is imperative in developing prevention strategies. The major three prevention strategies include; environmental prevention strategies, administrative prevention strategies as well as behavioural prevention strategies.

Environmental Prevention Strategies

Environmental prevention strategies are simple indicators which provide a practical way to deter and track criminal acts physically. In places of work, violence presents itself unethical and an illegal act; thus, as much as installation of physical surveillance is the prevention of intruders to the organization's premises as well serves to inhibit violence as the workers are monitored. Some of the environmental prevention strategies of workplace violence include:

• Cash control; A monetary value motivates 90 % of the total criminal acts that are committed daily in the places of work. In avoiding such scenarios, cash control may be executed through delegation of duties involving cash to particular individuals or encourage using cheques instead of cash.
• Installation of surveillance Cameras i.e. CCTVs; according to research, installation of surveillance cameras in an institution or an organization and making aware the personnel having access to the premise of being monitored reduces the occurrence of criminal acts to a greater extent.

Administrative Prevention strategies of workplace violence

The success of any organization largely depends on the style of administration incorporated in their daily activities. Prevention of workplace violence may be dependent on other prevention strategies, but the failure of the administration to act in their full capacity may lender different prevention strategies obsolete. Some of the administrative roles include:

• Conducting employee screening; the administration will play a pertinent role to ensure their workers' background is as clean as perceived to avoid workplace violence. Carrying out pre-employment screening serves best to understand the worker's past criminal history. The success of screening depends on various factors where the administration is required to counter check the employee's with the aid of the referees to verify the educational background of the employee, that is, help determine competency and ethical wise of the employee. Make contact with a former employer to know why the particular employee left the organization as well as working ethics of the worker. Credit history which will communicate a lot.
• Effecting safety and security policies for their employees; the administration is obligated in the formulation of protection policies for the interest of their workers. It will purposely protect the workers, thus minimizing violent incidences directed towards them (the workers).
• Developing a violence-free culture; by providing a clear outline of reporting violent incidences, regularly updating the existing safety protocol to merge the current dynamics as well as instilling confidentiality to the employees when confronted with violence
• The administration should ensure adequate and appropriate staffing; to avoid confrontation from clients in terms of services delivery.
• Creation of awareness to the employees on violence; extensively, the workers should be trained on techniques about violence scaling down, and the impact of embracing violence thus advocate for a violent free working environment.

Behavioural Prevention Strategies

Behavioural prevention strategies focus more on a cognitive response in the occurrence of workplace violence. Also, provides a difference of various personal matters should be held distinct from affecting professional life and productivity. Some of the strategies include:

• Appropriate training on responding to a robbery; in risk-prone areas, robbery in organizations in the surrounding may be a menace. Thus, how workers respond after detecting unusual activity is imperative. The training should include immediate safety measures to take. They include; making contact with the security personnel in charge, putting the workers' mobile phones on silent modes, etc. This calls for developing a good relationship with the police for quick response in the occurrence of a robbery.
• Practical training on how to use safety equipment; talking about using safety equipment means raising the alarm before the malicious activity occurs. When this measure is adequately integrated, it will minimize the risks by hardening the target and increasing the risk of the perpetrator being nabbed.
• Training on handling aggressive personnel; workers should be prepared to counter aggressive behavior directed towards them from agitated customers or their seniors; thus, the need to understand and recognize behavioral cues is essential. Secondly, workers should develop excellent communication skills to facilitate quality service delivery. There is a need to learn on the de-escalation of violence techniques.
• To evade interference of domestic violence from affecting work activities, learning to separate personal matter from professional ones is essential; thus, behavioral control is to be applied to distinguish between the two types of lives.

Conclusion

The extent to which these measures are undertaken will be dependent on various aspects which include; assessing the threats, the process will require involvement of legal minds and security experts. Additionally, to counter domestic violence since its atrocities can lessen organization output in terms of quality provision, counseling the workers from time to time is critical. The whole process of prevention strategies is rigorous for a safer working environment thus employers should resort for expert knowledge when formulating the strategies.

References

Gillespie, G. L., Pekar, B., Byczkowski, T. L., & Fisher, B. S. (2017). Worker, workplace, and community/environmental risk factors for workplace violence in emergency departments. Archives of environmental & occupational health, 72(2), 79-86.

LeBlanc, M. M., & Kelloway, E. K. (2012). Predictors and outcomes of workplace violence and aggression. Journal of applied psychology, 87(3), 444.

Nikathil, S., Olaussen, A., Gocentas, R. A., Symons, E., & Mitra, B. (2017). Workplace violence in the emergency department: A systematic review and meta analysis. Emergency Medicine Australasia, 29(3), 265-275.

Park, M., Cho, S. H., & Hong, H. J. (2015). Prevalence and perpetrators of workplace violence by nursing unit and the relationship between violence and the perceived work environment. Journal of nursing scholarship, 47(1), 87-95.

Piquero, N. L., Piquero, A. R., Craig, J. M., & Clipper, S. J. (2013). Assessing research on workplace violence, 2000-2012. Aggression and violent behavior, 18(3), 383-394.

Ramacciati, N., Ceccagnoli, A., Addey, B., Lumini, E., & Rasero, L. (2016). Interventions to reduce the risk of violence toward emergency department staff: current approaches. Open access emergency medicine: OAEM, 8, 17. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4886301/

Reese, C. D., & Eidson, J. V. (2014). Handbook of OSHA construction safety and health. Crc Press.

Yodaiken, R. E., & Bennett, D. (2011). OSHA work-practice guidelines for personnel dealing with cytotoxic (antineoplastic) drugs. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. American journal of hospital pharmacy, 43(5), 1193-1204.