Taken from Daily America
By DANIEL J. HERSH Davidsville
9:26 p.m. EDT, June 29, 2013
Their strong dislike for one another overcame reason. The warning against violence in the workplace issued by the company was the farthest thing from their minds. None at the workplace said later they saw a confrontation coming.
Assaults and other acts of violence comprise nearly 18 percent of all work-related deaths in the United States, second only to transportation incidents on the job, according to a preliminary report in 2010 by the United States Bureau of Labor.
Currently, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) gives managers 8 hours to orally report violent acts, and only when there is a death of a person or persons or when three or more employees are hospitalized.
If this approach to violence seems remote to you, then it shouldn’t be a surprise that the responsibility for employee’s safety falls on every employee at the work site. And the approach must be a proactive one.
You’ve probably heard of the popular term “zero tolerance,” a company’s policy established dealing with violence in the workplace. Fear of suspension, dismissal or prosecution is a good deterrent in preventing a worker from acting violently before weighing the consequences.
But has management ever summoned workers for a meeting to address, and ideally, to review the subtle causes of violence? It would be noteworthy if they did.
On the other hand, what can a worker do when a violent act begins, for example, when seeing a weapon brought to the workplace in the possession of an angry employee? At that point, a worker can only try avoiding becoming a victim oneself. It’s better taking a proactive step, alerting managers beforehand of an employee with a short temper and with a grudge who may have told a fellow worker that he or she has a permit to carry a firearm.
Taking a proactive approach to violence in the workplace is crucial, but it’s the attitude of every employee, supervisor and worker, which determines how safe the workplace is given the importance of detecting early signs of trouble.
One attitude, a managerial one, a neglectful one, includes the notion that two adversaries are capable of working out their problems by themselves. But no one in supervision can afford, at the cost of much pain and sorrow, neglecting to understand what those problems are and how likely they are to lead to violence.
Some managers are of the attitude that one worker dominating another, bullying another, is expected. They may have their reasons for this neglect: no time to confront the bully while scrambling under deadlines and production quotas, perhaps being on the side of the bully or— and equally disturbing—being themselves victims of the bully.
That’s in contrast to a disciplinary work environment where workers are expected to take discipline (abuse) in stride. Here, as in every episode of the bully and the victim, the browbeaten worker may show signs of taking extreme measures: talking about doing harm to oneself or others in the absence of managerial concern.
Workers are as responsible as managers for being proactive even when they make seemingly insignificant observations; they should view them as possible preludes to an assault.
Almost every workplace has at least one worker having a consistently oppositional attitude, who takes a negative stance toward every job imposed by a supervisor. No one can pretend they’re unaware of the possible reasons for such a negative attitude, one of which is a serious dislike for the boss, serious enough to cause an altercation.
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