VideoMention the risk of violence in the workplace, and most people probably imagine mayhem inside post offices, convenience stores, and fast-food restaurants. Their first thought certainly isn't of a corporate setting.
But if you assume you're automatically safe within an office, consider this: 14 workers in a San Francisco law office were shot in 1991, 8 fatally, by a disgruntled client. In fact, one of every six violent crimes occurs in the workplace. According to a study in 1996 by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), 30 homicides a week take place there, 75 percent of them robbery-related. Another one million workers are assaulted in the workplace each year.
To be sure, workers are most at risk if they have routine contact with the public, exchange money, or work alone or in small numbers, late at night or in the early morning, or in high-crime areas. And the vast majority of murders or assaults in the workplace are committed by strangers, according to the NIOSH study.
But workplace violence isn't restricted to fast-food restaurants and convenience stores in dangerous areas. According to a 1994 survey by New York-based management trainers American Management Association, more than one-third of the private-sector respondents, including service firms and manufacturers, experienced on-the-job violence in their offices or factories--many of them more than once. And sometimes, workers themselves are the perpetrators, as well as the victims.
Yet the typical company deludes itself about the issue. "There are some common misconceptions that executives have about workplace violence," observes Dennis L. Johnson, a clinical psychologist and president of Behavior Analysts & Consultants Inc., in Stuart, Florida. "One is the notion that it can't happen here."
That notion can be costly. In his book Violence at Work: How to Safeguard Your Firm, published last fall by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Mark F. Murray estimates that the annual cost to employers of violence at work exceeds $4 billion. While that includes the cost of enhanced security; of declines in productivity as a result of a traumatized, demoralized staff; and of higher turnover, it doesn't count medical and legal expenses, which average $250,000 per incident. And those legal costs don't include contingency fees paid out of judgments or settlements arising from suits against employers for failure to protect employees. Judgments in such cases average around $1.2 million, settlements, $600,000.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration says that failure to prevent workplace violence can violate federal law if an employer knows or could reasonably anticipate that a worker is subject to violence and it does nothing to prevent it. In one California case, an employer was found liable for a female worker's death because it failed to tell her that a co-worker with whom she became romantically involved was an ex-convict with a record of sexual assault and violent crimes.
The courts have also found that an employer can be liable for workplace violence resulting from negligent hiring. They've ruled that an employer must make a reasonable investigation into a job applicant's character to ensure that the applicant will not, by reason of his or her temperament, habits, or nature, create a risk of injuring his or her fellow workers. The courts have also found employers liable when they fail to act to keep a worker from becoming violent.
"If you fail to deter preventable violence, liability is nearly certain," Murray wrote in his book. "No employer would want to face a prosecutor who questions why, despite all the attention workplace violence has received over the last few years, the firm had no plan to prevent or reduce the likelihood of an incident."
Many companies nevertheless run that risk. Mark Braverman, a principal with Crisis Management Group Inc., a Newton, Massachusetts, firm that has developed violence-prevention programs for Fortune 500 companies, such as Digital Corp., and such government agencies as the U.S. Postal Service, the Department of Labor, and the U.S. Army recalls a case at a multinational corporation that he worked on in which a male worker continually intimidated, and once even physically attacked, his female supervisor. Management repeatedly ignored her complaints and other evidence of trouble. As her concerns about her safety grew, her health deteriorated. Finally, too ill to work, she resigned and hired a lawyer. At that point, Braverman argues, the company was in a lose-lose situation.
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"A lot of these companies prevail in court," Braverman says. "But the companies pay big time in terms of morale. An atmosphere is created in which no one trusts the company. That's horribly costly, but no one can calculate the cost."
Insurance is of limited use here. Of the few companies that offer coverage for violence in the workplace, all exclude liability. A policy sold by Cigna Corp., for example, covers such costs as loss of business income, public relations expenses, and employee salaries and death benefits, but specifically excludes "legal costs, judgments, and settlements incurred as the result of any claim, suit, or judicial action."
And while premiums for such coverage vary according to the size of a company, its loss history, and its line of work, they will be a lot higher without a workplace violence program in place, says Robert L. Carter Jr., an attorney with McKenna & Cuneo LLP, in Washington, D.C.
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