Gun Legislation Highlights Violence in the Workplace Exposure
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 | 0
--By Margaret Spence
After the recent shooting incidents at Northern Illinois University and at the Wendy’s here in Palm Beach County, I was cautiously optimistic that the Florida Legislators would table the Guns in the Workplace Legislation – I was wrong.
Last month, the Florida Senate Criminal Justice Committee approved SB1130 – Guns at Work Bill by a vote of 7-1 and for the first time this legislation seems destined to become law. (<i>Editor's note: The Florida House approved the measure on March 26.</i>
The critical issue for Florida employers, where do we go from here? It is quite apparent that we can no longer bury our heads in the sand hoping that this issue will go away. Instead of focusing on the fact that employees may have guns in their car at your job site, let’s evaluate your policies and procedures for preventing workplace violence.
If a violent act occurs at your job site no one is going to care about the law or laws that our legislators pass – the only question on everyone’s mind will be – what did this employer or business owner do to protect their employees, customers, vendors or the general public? Unfortunately, most businesses do not have adequate answers for this question.
Fact:
- Your employees may already have guns in their cars – without your knowledge.
- The fact that individuals can obtain guns legally will not prevent them from using it violently or in the heat of passion.
- No security measures can prevent someone from attempting to rob your business.
- Legislation, restraining orders or other legal documents will not stop someone from committing a violent act.
- Laws will not prevent employees, customers, vendors, subcontractors or visitors from bringing a gun into your work environment.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics – Survey of Workplace Violence Prevention, nearly 5% of the 7.1 million private industry employers in the United States had at least one incident of workplace violence. The majority of these establishments did not change their workplace violence prevention procedures after the incident and almost 9% of these establishments had no program to address violence in the workplace.
Workplace violence can be divided into four categories: Criminal intent – robbery; disgruntled employee/customer/client/vendor; employee-on-employee violence; personal relationship domestic related violence. The most common form of workplace violence is criminal intent – robbery. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics only twenty percent of private industry employers provide training on preventing workplace violence – seventy percent of employers in the United States do not have formal programs or policies that address workplace violence – astonishing.
What are your safety obligations as the employer/business owner?
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) require employers to create a work environment that is free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to their employees.
The Guns in the Workplace legislation flies in the face of the OSHA general duty clause, not withstanding employers still have an obligation to protect their workplace and prevent physical harm to their employees, vendors, clients, visitors and/or the general public.
What is your exposure?
Any incident of workplace violence can have disastrous effect on your business image, employee retention, company morale, employee productivity, sales, workers’ compensation cost, general liability cost, litigation expenses and ultimately the company ability to continue doing business.
The proposed Guns in the Workplace Legislation has some provisions to legally protect employers from liability but we all know being sued in America is common place – savvy attorneys will comb thorough this bill and find legal loopholes to hold employers liable for their employees actions.
Is the exposure covered by insurance?
In most instances, incidents of workplace violence may be covered by workers’ compensation or general liability or employment practices liability policies or a combination of all three. However this is not written in granite – employers may have exposures that are not covered by any of these policies. These exposure include: loss of business income, business interruption caused by the violent act, on site security, litigation and defense cost and grief counseling.
Most companies are opting to purchase Employment Practices Liability Policies with workplace violence coverage or stand-alone workplace violence policies. While these policies offer limited coverage they often cover things like: security site evaluation, risk management evaluation, review of corporate policies, hiring additional security as well as indemnity or defense cost. Another unique feature offered by some Workplace Violence Policies is the ability to cover threats of violence. For example, if the company has to hire additional security because an employee is threatened the policy would cover the cost of the additional security measures.
What are the key components of an effective Workplace Violence Prevention Policy?
Workplace Violence Prevention Policies should address critical exposures, provide adequate directions on how to eliminate the exposure, identify and establish emergency procedures, have a training component, address how the company will recover from the incident and it should offer specific answers to the following questions:
* What if – what is our exposure or what is the worst thing that can happen on our premises? This includes incidents that can happen in the parking lot, bathrooms, stairways, as employees arrive and leave work – this is a comprehensive look at the company and the exposure or risk.
- What do we do if? – Do you have a zero tolerance policy? What is our policy regarding threats, allegations, violent behavior, employees who have violent tendencies? Example: there is a robbery or someone brings a gun into the work environment. Worse case scenario what is your plan to protect your employees or your business?
- How do we protect our employees, customers, vendors – what is your overall plan to make sure everyone is safe? What security features do you need to add to insure safety?
- How are we going to make sure everyone who works for our company understands the emergency procedures? How do you plan to get written polices disseminated to all employees and continuously educate them about workplace violence? What is our training component?
- Who’s in charge? Who is responsible when the emergency happens? Who is going to speak to the media? Who is going to notify the victim(s)family?
- Do we have the right emergency contact information for our employees? How are we going to continually update emergency contact information?
- How do we recover – what are we going to do to make sure our employees recover from the grief, shock or anger post incident? How do we identify grief counselors? Do we use our Employee Assistance Program?
- How do we assure our employees, customers, vendors and the general public that our company is sincere about preventing violence in the workplace? And if an incident happens, what is our plan to make sure it never happens again?
- Will violence in the workplace continue – Yes!
- Will Guns in the Workplace Legislation contribute to the violence – it likely will!
- Are we safer without this law – No!
Is there a solution? – Yes!
Safety has to be implemented from the Boardroom to the Stock Room, employers can not longer be complacent and expend so much energy trying to keep the Gun Lobby and State Legislators from enacting laws, even misguided ones, that we forget that the potential exposure is a daily reality in our workplace. We can not get up everyday thinking it will never happen at my company – what are you going to do if it does?
Margaret Spence is president/chief executive officer of Douglas Claims & Risk Consultants and WorkCompSeminars.com. She is a board -certified workers' compensation consultant, speaker and trainer specializing in the field of injury management and return-to-work implementation.
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