In the wake of the recent Tucson shooting rampage, which killed six people and wounded 13 others, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, I found myself reflecting on my clients’ views of workplace violence.
Typically, HR professionals and corporate legal counsel I work with fall into two categories: 1) those who acknowledge the risk of violence at their own offices and work sites and (2) those who believe that they don’t have a problem with workplace violence.
But, wait a minute, I apologize. That was a complete exaggeration.
Denial is pervasive
I only have one type of client – the latter: Clients who deny they have a problem with workplace violence.
I get it. Like my clients, I would prefer to stay in denial and not think about guns and about people getting hurt. I don’t want to think the worst when my children walk out of the house or when I board a plane.
And yet, the possibilities of harm seem to become ever more present. Over the holidays, my family was stunned to learn that our quiet, suburban neighborhood had become the site of a non-fatal shooting. On the afternoon of the shooting, my daughter’s 10-year old friend looked out her kitchen window and watched as emergency vehicles arrived at the scene – some to take away the victim and others chasing the shooter.
Personally, while still trying cases, I was the victim of anonymous death threats and threats of sexual assault, presumably by someone involved in one of the cases I was handling. Despite a police investigation, the person who had made those threats was never found. And even though I was not physically harmed, the feelings of vulnerability and outrage associated with those workplace threats have never gone away.
In the aftermath of the shocking Tucson tragedy, my mind repeatedly comes back to one small humanizing fact: Coincidentally, Christina Green, the nine-year-old girl who died from gunshot wounds was born on Sept. 11, 2001.
What are the odds that someone born on that tragic day in our nation’s history would die in another massacre less than a decade later?
What meaning could any of this insanity have?
A reminder of the risks
Contrary to the prevailing media debate, what happened in Tucson is not so much a political issue, but a poignant reminder that violence can and does happen, often without warning, in our workplaces and across our communities. It is first and foremost, for me, a reminder to leave a legacy of integrity and kindness in the way that I live my life each day. It is also a reminder to us all that we cannot be in service to each other when we remain in denial or when we vow to keep silent.
Telling the truth about violence, though, is harder than it would seem.
“We don’t have those kinds of issues”
In my career as an ELI Civil Treatment® instructor and facilitator, leaders at several companies have told me that I could skip over any discussion in our harassment, discrimination and workplace behavior training about violence because that kind of stuff doesn’t happen at their offices.
I’m not sure how they came to that conclusion, given that homicide tops the list of leading causes of death for women in the workplace and the long list of workplace violence in recent years at places like Virginia Tech, the University of Alabama, Manchester, Connecticut, as well as countless others.
In one recent Civil Treatment training class, a senior HR leader told me he had no issues of workplace violence. Yet, as we continued to talk, it emerged that a man had come into the Midwest office looking for his girlfriend. He wanted to hurt her and when he couldn’t find her, he pulled out a gun and shot five employees.
Stunned, I turned back to the senior leader and asked if he knew about it. “That was different; it was more of a domestic violence issue that took place at our plant.”
And the really amazing part of this discussion? We were in Oklahoma City, the site of one of the worst incidents of workplace violence in US history – certainly the worst before 9/11.
The definition of workplace violence
The lesson is that violence that takes place in the workplace is workplace violence whether it takes place between spouses/domestic partners, between co-workers, by a third-party with a relationship to the organization (client, partner, etc.) or in conjunction with the commission of other crimes.
At another company, I walked into the lobby one day expecting a normal routine. Instead, I found a woman crying hysterically at the desk and she was being pulled away from the windows. Two guards were excitedly watching cameras and making radio calls and a call to 911.
No one acknowledged me. More guards came running into the lobby and the woman was taken away. Finally, one of the guards told me that a man in a white truck was driving around the building and that the woman claimed he was going to beat her up and had already beaten up another woman who had ended up in the hospital the night before.
Taking this in, I looked out to see the truck pass by – the same one that had passed me when I originally entered the lobby. Not sure what to expect, I sought a place to hide. The police arrived and arrested the man. Slowly, we resumed the normal routine and I went to teach professional workplace conduct as part of ELI’s Civil Treatment for Managers class.
That day, I covered the workplace violence training module despite this client’s repeated assurances in the past that they did not have “those kinds of issues.”
Incredibly, when I returned to the location a few months later to teach another class, I recognized the guard in the lobby and asked him if the women were alright after such an extraordinary event. Looking through his log book, he said, “Now let me see, which one was that?” His answer gave me chills with the recognition that there were even more issues than the one that I had witnessed.
Workplace violence is an issue for every worker and every employer whether we want to admit it or not. I suggest that we wake up to the risks posed to all of us so that we can begin to create safer communities.
Preventive measures
Beyond ensuring for safe facilities (lighting, secure entrances, alarms, surveillance cameras, etc.), the two most important preventive measures are to
- Establish procedures for preventing and responding to risks
- Routinely encourage people to speak up when they have concerns about others’ conduct and potential threats to safety.
Encouraging people to speak up about safety concerns cannot be overemphasized. I am reminded of a tragic murder suicide that happened at the University of Washington in 2007. The female victim, an employee there, had expressed concerns to staff and friends that her ex-boyfriend was stalking her and had threatened her life, but none of those concerns were reported to human resources.
Following the incident, the vice president of Human Resources stated in an interview that had the concerns been reported, any number of steps that could have been taken to reduce the risks: changing the victim’s phone number, relocating her office to another place on campus, increasing patrols and providing a security escort, etc.
Instead, in the interest of being discreet about the woman’s concerns, the people that purportedly cared about her ultimately put her (and countless others) directly in harm’s way.
So if people aren’t talking about violence issues at your workplace, you shouldn’t conclude that you don’t have a problem. Don’t kid yourself. It’s time to encourage people to speak up.
Tucker Miller is a professional facilitator, regional director and occasional blogger for ELI, Inc., a provider of ethics and workplace behavior training. She is licensed to practice law in the state of Washington and is a member of the Washington State Bar Association.
