Paper Example on Workplace Violence: Crisis Intervention for Optimal Biospychosocial Functioning

Introduction

Crisis intervention characterizes the immediate or short term response to physical, mental, or emotional distress in a person's immediate environment. In a workplace setting, crisis intervention aids to restore a person's equilibrium to their optimal biospychosocial functioning and in the process reducing any form of long-term distress or trauma. Today, workplace violence is a phenomenon facing numerous organizational workers and it occurs in the form of threat or physical abuse. Today, crisis intervention is an imperative undertaking that should be planned and implemented by employers to avert or mitigate the negative repercussions of workplace violence, which could stagnate the optimal performance of an entity's workforce.

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Description of the Problem

Workplace violence is not a new crisis in most workplace environments. Additionally, that is because it is a phenomenon that has been reported by workers over the past decades, which makes it an issue that requires appropriate interventions. The most common forms of workplace violence include cultural, gender, sexual, physical, and information violence. Also, researches executed by Escribano, Beneit, and Luis Garcia (2019), as well as Acquadro et al. (2019), evidenced that women are more susceptible to workplace violence compared to men. As such, the development of effective crisis prevention and management plan is remarkably imperative in an organizational setting in ensuring that different forms of workplace violence do not disrupt the regular operations of an organization.

In the United States, workplace violence is a major issue affecting thousands of workers in an organization setting (Arnetz et al., 2018; Phillips, 2016). Also, although numerous institutions have strived to create effective measures to mitigate the problem, it has not been possible to fully eradicate the problem. Research executed by Hunt and Hughey (2010) stated that workplace violence affects everyone in an organization and not just those that have direct experience with the workplace experience. The focus of this project will be to identify a workplace violence issue and effective interventions that a team can use to prevent or manage the repercussions of such types of violence to an organization.

In the focused organization, workplace violence against women has been an ongoing phenomenon. Specifically, sexual harassment cases have been reported by female employees against their male counterparts. To date, the organization has imposed stringent penalties for persons reported of perpetrating sexual harassment at the workplace such as termination of their employment. Additionally, the issue has also been covered by the local media outlets, whereby they have enlightened the public about the negative repercussions of perpetrating workplace violence. Also, the workers are the most affected by workplace violence because they lose their work morale while the organization is negatively impacted in terms of reduced profitability or revenue generation contributed by low performing workers.

Description of the People That Should Be On the Team

Despite the implementation of the termination from work policy at the workplace, every financial year, several sexual harassment cases have been reported at the organization. As such, there is a need for a new and better intervention strategy to be adopted to prevent the development of workplace violence at the organization. Among the effective strategies that should be adopted by the organization is the creation of a crisis management team that should focus on educating the workers on the importance of perpetrating violence against their peers in the workplace environment. In this case, it is presumed that preventing workplace violence would be more effective compared to punishing the perpetrators when a case is reported.

In this context, five people should be on the crisis intervention team. The members of the team should be inclusive of the organization's workers' representative, human resource department representative, organization's psychologist, and two officials from any department in the organization. Additionally, the team members will be responsible for devising effective strategies for preventing the occurrence of workplace violence, especially among female workers. In the past, cases of workplace violence have been reported to the human resource department without any preparedness measures to address the problem in place. Nevertheless, the creation of the proposed team will ensure that sufficient preparedness measures have been enacted to prevent the occurrence of the same problem in the future.

Description of the Function of Each Member and Schedule of the Team Meetings

The worker's representative will represent the workers' interests on what should be done to prevent the occurrence of workplace violence in the future. Contrary, the human resource department representative will ensure that all intervention strategies implemented by the selected team are fair and appropriate for all the organization workers. Additionally, the appointed organization's psychologist will provide a professional point of view on the effectiveness of any of the suggested intervention strategies that will be proposed by the team. Lastly, the rest of the team members will represent the organization's interests in the proposed workplace violence prevention interventions. Also, the team will meet every Friday in the evening at 4:00 p.m. Also, the team meetings will be held at the main hall in the organization's premises and all team members will be expected to attend or fail to attend with an apology printed out at least two days before the day of the meeting.

Resources That May Be Needed By the Team

In the proposed crisis intervention team, I will be the designated point of contact (POC). Additionally, I will coordinate the resources that will be required by the team in the development of effective crisis intervention measures. Additionally, the crisis intervention team will require local resources from the judicial service agencies. Moreover, the stated agencies will provide legal advice on what should be done to workers reported for subjecting others to workplace violence. Additionally, as the POC, I will be responsible for making all contacts with the external resources from the judicial service agencies.

Conclusion

In conclusion, today, crisis intervention is an imperative undertaking that should be planned and implemented by employers to avert or mitigate the negative repercussions of workplace violence. Additionally, that is because workplace violence could stagnate the optimal performance of an entity's workforce and subsequently decline the overall financial achievement of an establishment. Sexual violence is among the common forms of workplace violence affecting most workers in an organizational setting. Additionally, past research publications have evidenced that sexual violence in the workplace mainly affects women compared to men. Moreover, today in the United States, workplace violence is a major issue affecting thousands of workers in workplace environments. As such, it is conclusive that organizations should create an effective crisis intervention plan, so as to ensure that the management has appropriate resources to create a conducive environment for all their workers.

References

Acquadro M. D., Cortese, C. G., Pavanelli, P., Fornero, G., & Gianino, M. M. (2019). Gender differences in reporting workplace violence: A qualitative analysis of administrative records of violent episodes experienced by healthcare workers in a large public Italian hospital. BMJ Open, 9(11), e031546. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-031546

Arnetz, J., Hamblin, L. E., Sudan, S., & Arnetz, B. (2018). Organizational Determinants of Workplace Violence against Hospital Workers. Journal of occupational and environmental medicine, 60(8), 693-699. https://doi.org/10.1097/JOM.0000000000001345

Escribano, R. B., Beneit, J., & Luis Garcia, J. (2019). Violence in the workplace: some critical issues looking at the health sector. Heliyon, 5(3), e01283. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e01283

Hunt, M. L. & Hughey, A. W. (2010). Workplace Violence: Impact and Prevention. KCA Journal, 29 (1), 39-43. Available at: http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/csa_fac_pub/37

Phillips, J. P. (2016). Workplace violence against health care workers in the United States. New England Journal of Medicine, 374(17), 1661-1669. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmra1501998

Appendix

Project Outline

• Description of the problem
• Full description of the problem including whether the crisis is new or ongoing
• Explanation of what has been done in the organization to date to manage the problem
• Description of the People That Should Be On the Team
• Explanation of who should be on the team and why
• Description of the function of each member and schedule of the team meetings
• Description of the functions of each member of the team
• Description of the schedules of the meetings
• Resources that may be needed by the team
• Explanation of who should be contacted for outside resources
• Explanation of who should contact them
• Conclusion
• Summary of the key point discussed in the project