Introduction
This paper discusses the problem of workplace violence. Since workplace violence is one of the managerial issues that have been brought to the upfront in the recent times, it’s necessary to discuss it at a detailed level to prevent future cases of workplace violence that may result in either an instance of death or even monetary losses to the organizations where it happens.
Workplace violence entails any form or threat of harassment, intimidation, physical abuse or any other such disorderly conduct that takes place in a work environment. Moreover, it becomes difficult for most of the managers at workplaces to deal with violence cases since violent incidences may overpower their state and power of handling issues at the place of work. For this reason, many occurrences can result in violence at workplaces. This refers to cases of homicide where an employee commits violence at times, and all blames false fully directed to fellow employees, managers or even supervisors. This makes it necessary to deal with violence at workplaces by employing proper strategies and mechanisms to prevent these cases.
In this paper, we shall discuss to lay a sound basis to the ways that can facilitate the prevention of violence at workplaces. Moreover, we shall consider the extents to which workplace violence gets, the resultant costs of violence at the place of work and finally what causes violence at workplaces and how can we prevent such incidences in the future for the better part of working environments.
Extents and Causes of Work Place Violence
Workplace violence is an abuse that has been predominant for quite some time, though has not been subjected to the public eye for some time now since the 80s. Comparing what happened in the past to today’s problems that arise at workplaces, all that was involved in most cases was very short fights that often went unresolved. For today, things are relatively different since violence occurs in many forms in the workplace. Violence can involve threats that are either addressed in a verbal or written manner. Furthermore, employees can portray weird behaviors to their colleagues that are meant to demean their state and nature of work. The personal differences are one of the significant issues that can lead to such incidences.
Firstly, numbers is a topic that most people don’t like to be subjected to, and this is no different in this piece of literature. Fatal injuries that result to workers at their workplaces, especially in the United States, appears to be on the rise. Most of the cases are attributed to homicide that seems to be the primary cause of violence. For instance, in a case study conducted by Kelleher, statistics depict that 14% of violence cases were as a result of homicide. This appears to be the leading cause of all times in the workplaces (Kelleher, 1997).
Secondly, occupational categorizations seem to be another rampant cause of violence at the workplace. Hierarchies at the workplaces have led to problems that result in so many issues such as workers feeling that their bosses do not appreciate them. Moreover, employees at lower levels in the organizational structure are subject to bullying since most are in fear of losing their jobs which are a feeble survival point. Lastly, the divisions that exist in organizations have resulted in cases of death. Having a look at statistics brought up by NIOSH, it is clear that out of eleven cases of violence that happen in the workplace, around 6 of those cases are associated with death. Most researchers including Kelleher takes it that violence at workplaces leads to incidences of death (Baron & Neuman, 1997).
Lastly, workplace violence can result from most of the workers being based in community-based settings. In these set-ups, so much goes on ranging from influence by other workers or even exchange of money for some favor in concerning issues that need to be kept silent to safeguard one’s reputation. Such kind of incidences can result in workplace violence since this can be counted as corruption at the workplace. Some of the employees may choose to offer favors such as money to their supervisors so that certain cases are kept silent and away from the top management to engage. For this reason, some of the blames can be directed to innocent workers who then protest to safeguard their reputation thus resulting in cases of violence at the workplace.
Cost of Workplace Violence
Violence at the workplaces is not only limited to cases of death. Costs that result from violence at the place of work can be composed of hidden items whose cost can heavily cost the organization regarding reputation. So many things happen when cases of violence arise at the workplace. First, the organization where the violence incident occurs is mandated with the responsibility to enhance tight security measures. Moreover, it leads to the rebuilding of reputation in the organization since cases of violence that surpass lead to tarnishing in an organization’s name. Moreover, the business interruptions can occur as a result of the violence among workers and a lot of time may be taken to resolve the issues.
Furthermore, a majority of employees go ahead and feel traumatized thus resulting to low productivity by such kind of employees to the organization. Also, the loss of motivation by a majority of employees leads to losing of customers who in turn affect the loss of sales by the respective company. Also, most of the workers that face such levels of traumatization resign from their jobs hence the organization faces a misfortune for losing employees who were knowledgeable and valued.
Lastly, the organization incurs losses when it comes to catering for insurance premium rates, counseling care for traumatized employees and attorney fees. For instance, looking at the USA economy, a lot of expenses have resulted from cases of violence. In 1992, approximately $4.2 billion dollars were lost in such cases of violence and expenses (Cannon et al., 1995).
Preventing Workplace Violence
Developing a Prevention Program against Workplace Violence
Workplace violence is signaled by a number of indicators which may involve people getting threatened, others getting bullied and people getting indulged into behaviors that are inappropriate. This can affect the throughput that most workers give in result to the company. For this reason, every company focusses on preventing workplace violence since it helps the company maintain a good working relationship with its employees. This calls for creating a prevention plan that is solid in nature and to which every worker can comply to. In the prevention plan for violence management, the programs developed should employ various techniques.
One is a Pre-employment screening technique, in this technique involves employing mechanisms that portray information regarding the employees that at the workplace. Using the full information provided by the employees, solid security measures are enforced thus assuring the safety of the employees at the workplace. Moreover using security measures such as badges and using guard services helps in providing strict access levels to the working employees.
Secondly, training is also another way of ensuring that violence is controlled at the workplace. Training is essential not only for managers but also the managers and the supervisors to monitor the day-to-day workflow (Bowie et al., 2012). Through training, employees are able to respond to varying circumstances such as when conflict occurs at the workplace. It is necessary for a company to have a threat assessment team that does threat assessment to checks to see the possibilities of threats occurring in a company. With this, the resolutions made by the agents helps in the management of violence at the workplace and ensure that possible cases of violence occurrence are very minimal.
Thirdly, one can get information from any umbrella association with which they are linked, including workers' compensation board, the industry association, union office, or occupational health and safety regulators, to evaluate the severity of the identified risk factors. It would also be advisable to seek advice from local police officers and security professionals and assess some relevant publications regarding occupational safety. On the other hand, one can quickly identify risk factors for workplace violence through various newspaper or magazine clippings that touch on aggression activities in the industry (Monahan, 1990). Likewise, it would be prudent to contact the relevant legislative authorities to establish if there is legislation concerning prevention of workplace violence, which applies to one’s work environment. Also, it would be important to organize and evaluate the already collected information and recognize the occupations and locations that face the highest risk. Lastly, it is necessary to record the results of the assessment and use them to design a prevention program that has detailed recommendations for minimizing the risk of workplace violence in one’s organization (Monahan, 1990)
Prevention Measures against Workplace Violence
Every employee wishes to work in a safe environment that is devoid of any form of work-related transgression. One of the solutions to workplace violence is designing a viable prevention program against the epidemic (Dietz, Robinson, Folger, Baron, & Schulz, 2003). The prevention program should clearly define it in a clear-cut and concrete language. Besides, an effective violence prevention policy must strive to provide comprehensible examples of improper behavior and working conditions. Moreover, there is also need to establish an effective pre-hiring assessment, including background investigations and criminal history checks (Dietz, Robinson, Folger, Baron, & Schulz, 2003). Such measures would ensure that only candidates without penal or violent records are recruited to the company. Companies should also develop strategies and policies for resolving and investigating various complaints launched by employees concerning occupational health and safety. Likewise, there should be a plan to describe how one can communicate information regarding potential risks of violence among employees (Douglas & Martinko, 2001). Likewise, another solution would be to develop a system for employees to report suspicious behavior in the company. This system should provide anonymity and ensure whistleblowers feel safe. Lastly, there is a need to create an Employee Assistance Program in every company to offer counseling, motivation, and support to all employees to reduce chances of workplace violence.
Conclusion:
Society has been filled with so much diversity in recent years. Many changes have taken place in the technology world and the industrialization world. Creativity has been embraced through the creation of devices that handle so much including our mobile phones. Solutions have been built by intelligent developers to accomplish very complex tasks and now the big question of workplace violence is yet to be solved. People is naturally violent and that is nature dictated. It is too obvious that workers get jealous of each other especially after they realize one’s success. Though some of the workers may not be mentally stable or other fail to control their anger, it calls for proper measures to be implemented so that peace in the workplace is subdued.
References
Baron, S.A., & Neuman, J.H. (1997). Aggression in the workplace. In R.A. Giacalone & J. Greenberg (Eds.), Antisocial behavior in the organization (pp. 37-67). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publishing, Inc.
Bowie, V., Fisher, B. S., & Cooper, C. (Eds.). (2012). Workplace violence. Routledge.
Cannon, S.B., Cannon, K.P., Florence, E.W., Speakman, M.S., & Williams, D.L (1995). Workplace violence: Analysis of the issues and recommendations to reduce the exposure. CPCU Journal December 1995. (pp. 209-215)
Douglas, S. C., & Martinko, M. J. (2001). Exploring the role of individual differences in the prediction of workplace aggression. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(4), 547-559.
Dietz, J., Robinson, S. L., Folger, R., Baron, R. A., & Schulz, M. (2003). The impact of community violence and an organization's procedural justice climate on workplace aggression. Academy of Management Journal, 46(3), 317-326.
Kelleher, M.D. (1997). Profiling the Lethal Employee: Case studies of violence in the workplace. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger.
Monahan, J. (1990). Violence in the workplace. Journal of Occupational and Environmental
