Workplace Violence

If employees are unhappy at the workplace, it will likely affect their performance n reduced in productivity of an organization. When bad comes to worse, violence may break out in the workplace. Absenteeism will rise, productivity will reduce and some might even resign resulting in the organization is in need of more workers. Therefore, they will have to hire more people and provide training to these new workers. These problems are considered to be direct costs. As for indirect cost, workers will slowly lose motivation and will result in lack of creativity. Public relations problems will emerge due to the unhealthy working environment.

Physical violence is easy to be recognized at the workplace, but from a psychological point of view, it will become a serious form of violence as it slowly build up inside a person or cumulatively, it can have a devastating impact of the victim. They are various forms of violence such as assault where it involves actual physical harm for example hitting, kicking, beating and so much more. Then there’s abusing at the workplace, where an employee with higher power and authority misuse their rank to bully lower ranks workers physically and psychologically. Harassment is also considered as violence, it can be verbal or non-verbal, physical or psychological. This type of violence is usually based on age, religion, gender, nationality, social background and etc. Sexual harassment is included in this category as well.

Proper consideration and attention should be given in order to effectively prevent or at least minimize the emergence of violence in the workplace. A violence program should be establish regardless the size or type of an organization. This program should be able to identify and evaluate any potential violence, provide ways to eliminate or reduce it and understand the consequences of violence at the workplace.

Identifying any signs of potential violence is important and can not be ignored or let it go unrecognized. Any signs of danger should be report immediately. For example changes of personality in a person, signs of drug or alcohol abuse, extreme signs of stress level, workers threatening other workers, troubled romantic relationship involvement, and etc. When there is a potential for violence to happen, immediate action should be taken. The risk should be evaluated and a proper response plan should be develop to counter any unwanted behavior.

Once identified, employees that have the potential to pose any threat to the workplace should be provided with counseling or other form of help. Making counseling available in an organization may even encourage employees that are having troubles to seek help before anything bad happens. In case there are no qualified counselors available, arrangements should be made so that the employee can have a session with an external psychologist.

Total elimination of work related violence is impossible achieve but as long as the program can produce effective results, it can greatly prevent violence from occurring at the workplace or at least reduce it. It was proven that human nature is unpredictable. But as long there are participation of all level of organization and the commitment to prevent violence from happening, there is an excellent chance of avoiding any unwanted incident.