While the delta variant of Covid-19 has forced many businesses to pushback their office reopening plans indefinitely, facilities will eventually be fully staffed with workers. However, with more people returning to offices comes an increased threat of workplace violence, which could potentially be exacerbated by the lingering impacts of the pandemic.
Various Covid-19 mitigation policies enacted by organizations over the past 18 months, such as mask wearing and mandating vaccines, have drawn the ire of workers, many of whom have also become accustomed to a remote work lifestyle in the wake of the pandemic. And then, of course, there are the politics of Covid, which add yet another layer of consternation to the situation for employers. Just last week, President Joe Biden announced that he would be using an OSHA clause to force businesses with 100 or more employees to require workers be vaccinated against the virus or submit to weekly tests.
In talking with a number of different business leaders, Patricia Coureas, Principal Consultant for ADT Commercial’s Enterprise Security Risk Group, says that organizations today have an “acute awareness” of how the pandemic has impacted their employee base.
“Some of things I’m hearing include concerns the policies within a business or an organization are clearly articulated to the employees across every level,” says Coureas, who previously served as a Senior Security Manager at Coca-Cola and as a Special Agent with the FBI for 30 years prior to that.
James Spence, a Principal for the Enterprise Security Risk Group at ADT Commercial, who previously served as Global Head of Security at both Toyota and Novartis Vaccines, says while there may not be a lot of statistical data relative to workplace violence and the pandemic as of yet, businesses understand that as they bring employees back that mitigation programs surrounding this issue are going to be paramount.
“People have been working remotely for quite a long time and it is going to be a bit of an adjustment for people coming back into the office environment,” explains Spence, who also had a 10-year career in law enforcement prior to transitioning to the private sector.
Even with a reduction in staff throughout the pandemic, some organizations have still suffered mass shootings. In April, a 19-year-old former worker at a FedEx Ground facility in Indianapolis shot and killed eight people at the location before turning the gun on himself. Just a month later, a public transit worker in California killed 10 people, including himself, at a railyard in San Jose.
As people increasingly return to offices, warehouse facilities, manufacturing plants, and other facilities, Spence says most businesses are going to ensure that workplace violence training is going to be a priority.
“Most companies have a workplace violence training program that most or many of their employees are required to participate in,” Spence adds. “That program will really deliver some important things that employees are going to need a refresher on and a lot of that is, ‘if you see something, say something.’ If you are noticing a concern about an employee – maybe a change in demeanor, he or she is making some unusual comments – companies are usually going to have a call-in line or a type of email system where employees can report something like, ‘hey, I’ve got an employee, he or she is really acting differently than they used to and I’m concerned about this person.’”
Mitigation Evolves
Though it used to be viewed as solely the purview of security, Spence says workplace violence mitigation programs are now the responsibility of the entire organization and that every person plays an important role.
“It is something that can be identified before it gets to a tipping point,” he says. “One thing that has been put in place in many organizations, especially ones I’ve worked with, is a workplace violence response team. For example, if something comes into a hotline about an employee that has had a big shift in demeanor over the past few months and made some very anti-establishment-type remarks or something like that… then that response team could be activated and have some discussions about how to handle it.”
According to Spence, this oftentimes includes seeing how the organization can offer help the employee address the different external factors that are affecting their behavior, such as alcohol or substance abuse, divorce, financial distress, etc.
Over the course of her career, Coureas says she has seen businesses improve at identifying the risks, which thereby enables them to develop better mitigation strategies.
“That’s really key and a big improvement on the parts of businesses and organizations because there is a keen awareness of how things have evolved,” she adds. “The threats will evolve, the threats will constantly change and as they do, they need to be agile and adapt to those threats, and I’m seeing that as a very good positive thing in our world.”
Common Challenges
According to Coureas, some of the most frequent obstacles organizations face in preventing workplace violence includes an inability on the part of the business to identify risk themselves or hire someone with the proper expertise that can conduct a risk assessment to identify these potential blind spots.
“Those are really important things to do,” Coureas explains. “Also, creating and developing the policy, which again, a consultant can come in and do and help with developing a policy that meets and addresses those gaps. Additionally, if an organization is not providing training consistently across the board, I believe it is confusing to employees and they don’t know how to respond.”
However, Spence warns that there is no one-size-fits-all approach that organizations can adopt.
“There are certain industry standards when it comes to workplace violence; however, it really does depend on the type of business that you have, how your business is structured and many other factors,” he adds. “For example, a large manufacturing facility is going to have to have certain, very specific instructions in the event of a workplace violence incident as opposed to a very small office environment. It’s really a sort of apples and oranges-type of how to best mitigate that type of risk if there is an incident.”
Also, Coureas says that many organizations frequently make an erroneous assumption that their employees know what to do when confronted with an active assailant scenario.
“They know what to do. Maybe they are in the legal department, maybe they are in the security department, and they understand the policy and they may have even helped to create the policy, but they should not assume that the employees know what to do,” she explains. “That is where the training comes in, that’s where a town hall or any other type of real visible training or transparent communication becomes a factor. Communication is key and if those policies are not discussed openly and clearly articulated to the people, they don’t understand.”
Another common pitfall for businesses, according to Coureas, is failing to have proper resources in place for their workforce.
“You should have contacts with local law enforcement and community-based resources – whether it is a psychologist, connecting with a group of people that are very focused on these types of preventive scenarios, or those who do tabletop exercises around this so people can actually understand, ‘oh, this is a safe environment, this is happening, and it is just an exercise, but we actually know now what we do if… [happens],” Coureas says.
Joel Griffin is the Editor-in-Chief of SecurityInfoWatch.com and a veteran security journalist. You can reach him at [email protected].
