Dealing With the Aftermath of a Workplace Violence Incident
This article focuses dealing with the aftermath of a workplace violence incident that has already occurred. While it may go without saying, I want to remind you that ‗the absolute best practice for dealing with a workplace violence incident is to prevent it from happening in the first place. While you may have put a stellar focus on early detection and prevention the stark reality is that despite an organizations‘ best efforts it is still possible that an incident could occur because ultimately, workplace violence is an act by a desperate, desolate or deranged person. Unfortunately, violence is part of the human condition and human beings behaviors are far from predictable. Under the right, or perhaps it is the wrong set of variables coming together human being are capable of invoking great harm and devastation on other people. I am reminded of the advice that a consultant once gave me, he said ‗don‘t be surprised when people act like people.‖ The focus of this article is on what to do after a shooting incident has erupted in your workplace. Yes, I know you wish you had followed our advice to focus on detection and prevention, however, that is now ‗water under the bridge‘ and its now time for your team to step up to provide the leadership necessary to lead your organization, management, employees, clients and community through the situation. It is mission critical time and what your team does will significantly impact the success of the organization in the days to follow. In the past you may have thought that the Security Department did not get the respect it deserves and its contribution to the organization was not recognized. Well now the moment has arrived for you to demonstrate your departments‘ worth and the eyes of the enterprise are on you. You and other leaders must respond immediately and effectively during a crisis. Why? Because how you handle the first several hours after a tragedy offers both tremendous opportunity and serious risk for your organization and outcomes. Employees, clients and the community will be watching you very carefully as they make decisions about their own reactions. Everyone will be focused on you, and will immediately make judgments about whether the company cares, and whether or not you and the other leaders are in control. You must be prepared to present that rare combination of compassion and competence.1 Effective crisis leadership includes both: ―I care and I am competent enough to facilitate resilience and to lead our company through this challenging crisis.‖ Individually and organizationally, recovery is facilitated when leaders acknowledge the personal impact on the people involved, while at the same time transitioning them to the next steps towards recovery. One of the first steps for you to take is to realize the brevity of the situation and potential impact on the organization. There are four dimensions along which crisis can impact your organization. 2
Operational impact – An operational crisis interferes with your ability to continue normal operations. Life safety & security impact – injures or kills employees, clients, passengers, guests, others. 1
Dealing With the Aftermath of a Workplace Violence Incident
Financial impact – reduces your revenue, increases your costs and damages your company‘s ability to raise capital. Reputational impact –damages your corporate reputation and reduces your support among stakeholders.
One of the defining characteristics of a crisis is that its impact is uncertain. In every crisis, there is an opportunity to influence the impact – to emerge from the crisis stronger, weaker or not at all. Therefore, it‘s essential you set clear goals for your crisis management efforts. Thus, one of the first requirements that you must address is to be very clear about the goals of managing the crisis and to prevent the ‗mutation‘ of one type of crisis into another – to keep an operational crisis from becoming a life safety & security, reputational or financial crisis, for instance. For example, in the horrific shooting incident that happened at VA Tech we know that with the initial shootings in the dormitory the ‗Life Satety & Security‘ dimension had occurred along with ‗Operational‘ and ‗Financial impact‘ on the dormitory operations. Unfortunately by not locking down the campus at that point the event spread across the other dimensions to have university wide impact across all the dimensions. With appropriate crisis management planning and execution of the plan it is highly likely the spread of the impact could have been forestalled. In addition, a crisis is overwhelming. To successfully lead through a crisis, you must make it not so overwhelming. Like any overwhelming challenge, break your crisis into bite-sized bits. Focus your first decisions on containment – taking immediate action to prevent the situation from getting worse. You don‘t have to solve the entire crisis right away. First, you have to keep it from getting worse and buy yourself some time to assess the situation in more detail and then make situation-specific plans to resolve it. 3 In a crisis, people respond by instinct. Unless you can afford to practice immediate actions to the point they become instinctive (as military and emergency services professionals do) you should design these procedures to be as close as possible to routine daily operating procedures. This stage typically includes measures such as:
focusing on people first, property second. moving people at risk to a place of safety. calling for help from emergency services, if required. treating injuries to prevent them growing worse. establishing a perimeter around the affected area so people don‘t wander into danger. acting to prevent the crisis from crossing out through the perimeter – fire fighting, isolating unaffected activities so they are not damaged by those involved in the crisis, etc. creating a central information point where external stakeholders, media, etc. can come for information from your organization about what‘s going on – ensuring there is one informed voice speaking for your organization.
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Dealing With the Aftermath of a Workplace Violence Incident Following your initial containment it is important to build into your crisis management process a capability to make accurate decisions. This means assigning responsibilities for gathering information, creating reliable procedures to pass information to decision-makers and training people to interpret it accurately. 4 This may involve:
creating a crisis operations center where all information from employees, stakeholders, media, etc. can be gathered and assessed. teaching employees to send critical information to the operations center. gathering a crisis management team with broad representation from across your organization to help assess and interpret information as it comes in – perhaps including managers normally responsible for operations, customer service, facilities, human resources, finance, marketing, public relations, etc. creating a ―log book‖ to record critical information as it comes in and a simple filing system to safely store reports and information. creating a way to differentiate between accurate and inaccurate, relevant and irrelevant information.
It is important to return your organization to normal operations as efficiently as possible. Great organizations also learn from their experience, so your crisis management process should include procedures for an ―after action review‖ to discuss what worked, what didn‘t and to improve your ability to manage the next crisis. Also be sure to identify the learnings from the experience that should be built into future prevention efforts. In others words, once you have taken a breather, its time to prepare all over again knowing that you will be much better prepared should another crisis happen. One of the requirements to be able to appropriately address a crisis is ―you must begin before the beginning‖ and already have a comprehensive crisis management plan in place that is specifically designed to address a workplace violence shooting incident. We recommend the creation of a plan specifically designed to address an active shooter situation because unlike any other hazard or disaster, a workplace violence incident involves a thinking, mobile and dangerous human being which makes it unique amongst all disasters. Accordingly, it must be dealt with in a manner that take this human factor into consideration to avoid errors that could add to the mayhem associated with these incidents and could actually cause additional employees to be in harm‘s way. To illustrate the point; most actions that are correct for other disasters such as fires, bomb scares, natural disasters, etc., call for evacuating a facility. However, evacuating your facility while an intruder is shooting at people may be the worst thing to do as it may in fact lead people into harms way. During most disasters communications to evacuate people is the primary goal, while during a gun toting incident communications must be set up to direct employee‘s movements in an extremely precise and urgent manner via multiple methods. For example, relying on a loudspeaker system would not be effective since the intruder would hear and react to the instructions too. This may seem obvious to many of you, however, you would be surprised at the number of businesses we encounter that have not taken the above into consideration. Although we must say that we are pleased to see that many universities have learned from the communication challenges encountered at VA Tech and upgraded their communication processes for reaching students, staff and faculty. 3
Dealing With the Aftermath of a Workplace Violence Incident A survey conducted by The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., illustrates how companies, in general, are not prepared to specifically address unique crisis planning aspects associated with workplace violence. The survey revealed that while 97 percent of small and midsize businesses have at least one plan in place to protect themselves against some type of emergency, most lack emergency response plans. The survey, which consisted of interviews with 225 businesses with 3 to 500 employees, asked businesses if they had procedures in place to guard against national disasters, workplace violence, terrorism, etc. The survey found that, on average, businesses have 4 different types of plans in place to protect themselves against emergencies. The most common emergency prevention procedure used by businesses (84 percent), addressed backing up or securing data and records. Significantly fewer, (61 percent) have procedures for reporting acts of workplace violence and only 12 percent say they have procedures to follow in the event of terrorism, which is an extreme form of workplace violence. In addition, a survey released by the Society of Human Resource Management revealed that 57 percent of respondents do not have an ‗emergency evacuation plan that covers violent acts.‘ Since this study was released in January 2004 we hope that this number has improved since that time. Having made a case for the need to have a crisis plan to address workplace violence, it is also important for all organizations to have a ‗no weapons‘ policy in place that actually deters or prevents people with weapons gaining access to your facilities. For example, in the shooting rampage that occurred in the Lockheed Martin facility in Meridian, Mississippi; an employee left the plant got a shotgun and a semiautomatic rifle, then came back in and started shooting people. The company reportedly had a ‗no weapons policy.‘ However, the big question is whether they actually took affirmative steps and actions to enforce it since the employee was able to come back in with the weapons. A comprehensive approach to addressing a workplace violence incident involves the following seven key steps: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Identification of Critical Incidents that trigger activation of plan Reporting Procedures Pre-Incident Preparation Emergency Actions a. Crisis Communication plan b. Critical Incident Response 5. Training in Procedures and Responsibilities 6. Testing and Exercises 7. Integration with Business Continuity Plan Step One: Identification of Critical Incidents: First, it is important to define ‗What is a Critical Incident?‘ Is it a shoving match between employees? An employee being threatened by a customer? An employee yelling curse words at the top of their lungs? A good definition to use includes - death, serious injury or severe psychological trauma of an employee, client or person that people have had regular 4
Dealing With the Aftermath of a Workplace Violence Incident contact with; any situation which will attract unusual attention from the news and media, any occurrence that is likely to seriously interfere with the continuous operation of critical business functions or have a sever negative impact on the organizations reputation. Ensure that your plan clearly defines the types of incidents that trigger the plan‘s activation. Do not leave this wide open to interpretation or the program could be unnecessarily triggered and tie up important resources. Step Two: Reporting Procedures: The second step is for the organization to have a Workplace Violence Prevention policy that clearly states the reporting requirements and procedures for imminent danger situations. It is helpful to have threats defined based on the clarity of intent, severity and imminence. Typically policies require that employees report emergency or imminent danger situations either directly to law enforcement (911) or an internal control center and/or security. Remember the faster an organization knows about a critical incident, the faster it can put its plan into to motion. A tip to consider - Conduct a desk review of company security, safety and human resource policies, it is frequently found that the policies are incongruent and sometimes in direct conflict. It is very important to ensure that these policies are synchronized; if the company should end up in court, confusing or different policies can work seriously to your disadvantage. Step Three: Pre-Incident Preparation: You should ensure that a full workplace violence prevention program is in place. The second part is to have each department and subsequently, each employee put together a ‗Stay Safe Plan.‘ A ‗Stay Safe Plan‘ for a department involves the supervisor developing a specific plan for their unit with employee input that fits the specific type of work performed and the work environment. Some of the typical items that should be included: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
How to recognize ‗early warning signs‘ How to diffuse hostile situations Emerging procedures Concealment plan Exit or escape strategy
The ‗Stay Safe Plan‘ for employees individualizes the department plan. Some organizations encourage their employees to also address security and safety awareness issues outside of work in their personal Stay Safe plan. This tends to create a safety and security mindset which reinforces the firm‘s program and can establish ‗think safe‘ as a way of life. Another area to consider regarding pre-incident preparation is the establishment of safe rooms, which some consultants advocate, although not all experts agree with this concept. Another pre-incident preparation step is damage mitigation which involves not only dealing with an immediate crisis, but also ensuring that it doesn‘t mushroom into even bigger 5
Dealing With the Aftermath of a Workplace Violence Incident problems. Some ways of doing this involve having Employment Liability Insurance and having alternative facilities pre-identified with arrangements to act already in place. Step Four: Emergency Actions: The fourth step is Emergency Actions. This fits into two parts that also require advance preparation. A) Crisis Communications Plan: First, the organization should have a Crisis Communication Plan, because one the top rules of Business Continuity is ―If you can‘t communicate, you can‘t recover.‖ An effective Crisis Communication Plan must be built to address: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Speed – How quickly can communication take place? Accuracy – Is the correct information reaching the intended audience? Flexibility – Are there any limitations to the organization‘s communication effort? Effective & Reliable – Will the communications system work every time, regardless of the situation?
Some of the important questions to consider in building the plan include: 1. Does the organization have back-ups that are fully trained and current for members of Crisis Management Team? 2. How fast can the plan be implemented in terms of minutes? (tie to timing needed to save people‘s lives as well as restore critical business functions) One example is if the central phone system is down 3. Decide in advance what will be said to the various stakeholders. The time to develop a message about a crisis situation is before the crisis occurs. During an emergency, there will not be time to think about it. 4. Does the organization have an off-site alternative location for crisis response? 5. Does the organization have employee notification systems in place as well as alternative plans to be able to contact employees that are on site, etc.? 6. Has the organization created a means to direct media and others to a central source of information where accurate information is being gathered and released? 7. Does the organization have a means of contacting employees that are off-site? - Cellular phones - Satellite phones - GPS mobile devices 8. Has the organization anticipated what could go wrong and built in contingency plans? From a technological vantage point, one of the best tools to utilize is an automated emergency notification system which works like an advanced phone tree to facilitate the rapid distribution of messages to hundreds or thousands of employees via pages, faxes, email, PDA, etc. There are plenty to choose from on the market.
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Dealing With the Aftermath of a Workplace Violence Incident A system can be operated from a single personal computer with access to the Internet, which allows communications with anyone in virtually any location. The system also allows the organization to pinpoint it‘s message and to send specific messages to specific people or groups of people; an essential quality necessary in dealing with a workplace violence incident. It may be necessary to evacuate people in one location, have people stay put and lock down their facilities in another while informing yet another group of individuals to stay away from the facility where the problem is occurring. In addition, the system is operational 24 hours a day so it always ready to go. B) Critical Incident Response: The second part of the Emergency Action step involves establishing a Critical Incident Response process in advance of an incident occurring. Critical Incident Response deals with the emotional and/or psychological fallout or ‗after affects‘ that people often experience after being exposed to a traumatic event. It is oftentimes referred to as Psychological First Aid. Emotional distress ―is potentially contagious, self-sustaining, and self-amplifying.‖ Early intervention can slow or prevent the contagion. In the immediate aftermath of a crime, disaster, or other troubling incident, emergency psychological service can offer victims and their co-workers comfort, information, support, and help with practical needs. It can also spot those who appear most troubled by the event and may need more intensive psychological attention in the future. As was pointed out by the highly acclaimed ‗Workplace Violence Issues in Response‘ Report by the FBI, information is crucial in controlling emotional distress during a crisis. When people don‘t know what is happening, they feel helpless and when there is no solid news, rumors—often frightening ones—will fill the gap. Crisis managers need reliable information to make decisions. It is just as important for managers to share the information with the rest of the workplace community as rapidly and honestly as possible, so that false reports and irrational fears do not spread and make the crisis worse. As with all other aspects of emergency management, timely psychological support will be more effective if it has been prepared and practiced as part of an employer‘s workplace violence prevention plan. Planning cannot anticipate every circumstance, but a plan should identify those inside or outside a company who will direct and carry out the psychological support effort in a crisis. This also includes emergency response personnel who are oftentimes overlooked with regard to the impact of trauma on them and what is known as vicarious traumatization (secondary traumatization experienced by providers that listen empathically to the trauma stories of others and responders that assist victims, are at risk for reactions too.) The Critical Incident Response process is a critical step that impacts the speed at which the organization‘s operations will be able to recover and resume productive business again. Research has shown that it takes 6 to 18 weeks for an employer to return their workplace to normal operations after a traumatic event. The recovery time is considerably longer in workplaces where the employer fails to assist employees in the recovery process. 7
Dealing With the Aftermath of a Workplace Violence Incident
For this reason, in the midst of addressing the four dimensions (operational, safety & security, financial and reputational) in the aftermath of a tragedy, it is also advisable to pay special attention to the human needs of your affected employees during and after a crisis which cuts across all of the dimensions.
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Dealing With the Aftermath of a Workplace Violence Incident How People Usually Behave When Traumatized 1. We regress to more basic, primitive impulses and defenses. The brain is re-circuited to focus on creating an immediate sense of safety. However, these new thought patterns are not necessarily logical, since the portions of the brain dealing with advanced abstract thought are ―put on hold.‖ Decisions tend to be impulsive, extreme, and emotional (rather than logical). Emotional responses are magnified and self-protective. 2. We immediately attempt to make sense of the incident in an effort to gain a feeling of control over it. We need to create an answer to the ―why‖ of what happened, even when one isn‘t readily available. We believe that if we can just understand the incident, then we can prevent its reoccurrence. Our understanding of the incident is likely to be reactive and lack objectivity. 3. We isolate from others. The lack of control experienced in tragedy leads people to pull away from others in distrust. Source: Crisis Management: The Critical Human Element, Robert Vandepol & Calvin E. Beyer, CFMA BP, September-October 2009.
Given the complexity and what is at stake the organizations should be sure to have preidentified professional resources from a professional crisis management consulting firm, employee assistance program or community mental health resources that are credentialed and specifically certified in the Critical Incident Response process. Step Five: Training In Procedures and Responsibilities: The fifth step is Disaster Preparation Training. Stop and think for a moment! Have your organization‘s employees received sufficient disaster recovery/business continuity planning training? This step involves assuring that all employees receive the appropriate training regarding the overall crisis response plan, in general, and their specific roles and duties in executing the plan. Training should at minimum include:
warning signals and their meaning, appropriate reaction and actions to take identification of an explanation regarding sequence of actions to take in an emergency, including how to report incident and to whom emergency shutdown or lock down procedures evacuation procedures and routes, assembly areas and headcount management procedures providing assistance or care to victims
In addition to the above, management personnel should also receive training in their duties and responsibilities during a crisis. This should include: 9
Dealing With the Aftermath of a Workplace Violence Incident
specific responsibilities in the Crisis Management Plan leadership skills required for crisis management media relations skills, of assigned this responsibility
Finally, Crisis Response Team members should receive detailed training in their specific responsibilities in the plan, including response procedures for incident command, control and lines of authority, how to use specific equipment during the crisis and how communications should be handled. The appropriate training for each level of employee is an essential step in ensuring the workability and success of your plan. Step Six: Testing and Exercises: The sixth step naturally follows training – Testing and Exercises. A fundamental rule of thumb of training is: train first, and then test for competency. An organization can not afford to be in the position of hoping that its employees know what to do when a crisis strikes particularly those that are part f the crisis response effort. You want to be assured that they have learned the information presented in the training. The only way to do that is to test their knowledge acquisition and to have them demonstrate their competency. Too many businesses do not follow this fundamental premise and consequently leave themselves wide open for an unpredictable response to a crisis event. Outdated and untested methods provide a false sense of security and actually place a company at a greater risk of operational failure The American Management Association reported in a recent study that 57 percent of companies fall into to this situation and have not conducted a crisis drill to test the implementation of their plan. According to the ASIS International Disaster Preparedness Guide, some of the methodologies for testing a plan include:
Walk through or Tabletop Drill - an interactive exercise with discussions of hypothetical or mock scenarios where actual emergency response functions are acted out in a classroom setting; Limited Scope Drills - these involve limited mobilization of personnel and equipment to test interaction, coordination, participant activity as well as assess participants knowledge and execution of required procedures, e.g., building evacuation; Full Scale Exercise – a comprehensive test of the interaction and coordination in the emergency planning program; testing of the knowledge and skills of most key staff with emergency responsibilities; mobilizing personnel and testing knowledge of appropriate equipment to use and how to use it; uses trained personnel such as police and fire personnel, other agency or organization‘s emergency response personnel or consultants to control, evaluate and simulate participant activity on a large scale.
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Dealing With the Aftermath of a Workplace Violence Incident It is important to simulate the timeliness (time to recover) of your business being able to bounce back to normal levels of production and service. Phillip Jan Rothshein suggest in his book to Disaster Recovery Testing: Exercising Your Contingency Plan to always add in a factor of at least .5 – 1.0 times to your actual time for unanticipated and unexpected events. If the timeliness of your exercise is not acceptable then your options are to focus more resources on prevention to reduce the risk of the ‗crisis‘ occurring or change your crisis response so that the recover fits an acceptable time line. One of the biggest problems that firms fall prey to with disaster preparedness planning is the illusion that their plan will work exactly the way it is designed to. In reality a plan never works exactly as it is planned to, so the organization must test it to see where it is weak, where instructions are confusing and to identify problem areas so that the plan can be improved. Before leaving this step where the emphasis has been on the criticalness of testing the plan, it is important to issue a clear and absolute warning –an organization should never, under any circumstances conduct a surprise workplace violence incident exercise or drill where it depicts someone getting seriously injured or killed. To do so can subject the firm to tremendous liability because employees, unaware that it is a drill, could experience severe traumatic response, which does not simply dissipate upon the subsequent announcement that it was just a drill. Step Seven: Integration with Business Continuity and Organization Resiliency Plan: The final and seventh step is to integrate the Workplace Violence Crisis response plan with the overall organization‘s Crisis Response Plan. It is necessary to emphasize this point since earlier in this article we stated that workplace violence is a unique hazard that must be addressed in a unique manner. While this is true, the plan still needs to be congruent and fit under the auspices of the organization‘s greater continuity and resiliency plan. The recent Fort Hood Shooting Rampage provides us with an example of how organizations should respond to a crisis. Reports have indicated many lives were saved by the courageous acts of those who helped the wounded following the horrific shooting attack. The actions of Soldiers and first responders have been called a "textbook example" of what should be done in the aftermath of a situation that was anything but ordinary. See table 2 for details. Emergency Response To Shooting Deemed Flawless Safety officials who arrived just moments after the shooting said the number of dead and wounded was shocking. However, exercises conducted in the aftermath of incidents such as Columbine and Virginia Tech helped the response and recovery efforts. Other police units, including state troopers, were summoned to control traffic surrounding the post. The immediate focus of Chuck Medley, Directorate of Emergency Services and Fort Hood Police Chief David Ross was to eliminate any further direct 11
Dealing With the Aftermath of a Workplace Violence Incident
threat, secure the scene and assess the wounded to summon whatever help was needed. On their heels was Billy Rhoads, the Fort Hood Fire Department chief, who immediately went to render aid to Kim Munley, one of two post police officers credited with stopping the shooter. Took control of the scene quickly "controlled chaos." Identified resources available in surrounding communities, e.g., Fire department, community police departments, etc. Ross directed subordinates to establish a perimeter around the scene of the shooting to preserve evidence. Equally significant were the actions of Soldiers who, not surprisingly, immediately sprang into action to help their buddies, "Many Soldiers exhibited total disregard for their own safety to take care of their comrades. Without fail, Soldiers did what they're expected to do." Soldiers quickly began treatment as they have been trained, preventing blood loss by fashioning bandages from pieces of their own uniforms. "If not for them, we'd have had a lot more fatalities," Rhoads said. The wounded were grouped according to the severity of their injuries. Medical evacuation helicopters made continuous loops to speed the injured to area hospitals. The relationship between post emergency forces and first responders in the surrounding communities are forged in brotherhood, Rhoads said. "We all work together. If anyone needs anything, all it takes is a phone call." The mutual sharing of assets and co-training is normal in the emergency response field and the actions of responders here - fire, police and EMS - are already being studied and lauded. Mass casualty exercises were validated. They had planned for the worst-case scenarios and all the hours of training was put to use. It saved lives. Source: Andrew Evans, 10 Minutes of Hell; Emergency response to shooting deemed flawless, Sentinel Staff, Department Of Defense U.S. Army Releases, Federal Information and News Dispatch, Inc November 12, 2009.
Also, despite the unique aspects of workplace violence, there are many areas that should be common to a firm‘s response to crisis, that integrate common methods and make wise use of the firm‘s resources. Keep in mind that while the plan must be comprehensive, it must also be actionable. A four inch binder stuffed with 300 pages of narrative is not actionable. Action based checklist are much better.
One final point I want to make before closing has to do with getting the necessary resource support for your workplace violence prevention crisis plan approved by management. One way of thinking about this is to ask your management team what is the impact on the business of having our production or service operations down for one day? Two days? A week? Work with your financial department to get the real financial impact and cost numbers.
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Dealing With the Aftermath of a Workplace Violence Incident Armed with this information make the discussion about maintaining production and service levels not about ‗crisis management, disaster recovery, emergency management or whatever else you call it.‘ If you remember when George Bush senior lost the election to Bill Clinton many thought it was because of his neglect to focus on the economy and the statement ‗It‘s the Economy, stupid‘ was born. Well playing on this political analogy ‗It‘s the business operations and sales, stupid.‖ Senior managers do not care about the elegance of your Crisis Management plan and that it is considered best practice, they want to know about how to keep the production line running and the sales of product going up and anything that will interfere with this will get their attention. In closing, keep in mind, the infamous and lingering words of the philosopher George Santayana – ―those who ignore the mistakes of the past, are doomed to repeat them.‖ When developing your crisis response plan you should build it based on the successes of other organizations and particularly taking care to learn from the mistakes those organizations made so you will not have to experience them. The attacks on the World Trade Center, Columbine, Virginia Tech and Fort Hood must serve as a tumultuous wake up call that we can no longer be laissez faire about security and that we must remain ever diligent in our focus on anticipating, planning for and being prepared for the unexpected, but inevitable deeds of violent men. While we may not be able to prevent all incidents, we have no excuse for not being prepared to address them when they occur. Bibliography: 1. G. Mark Towhey, How to manage through a Major Crisis in Five Steps, http://disasterresource.com/newsletter/subpages/v180/meet_the_experts.htm 2. Ditto. 3. Ibid. 4. Ditto.
About the Author W. Barry Nixon, SPHR, is the Executive Director, the National Institute for Prevention of Workplace Violence, Inc., a company focused on assisting organizations to effectively implement programs to prevent workplace violence. He is the author of ‗Background Screening and Investigations: Managing Risk in the Hiring Process,‘ ‗Zero Tolerance is Not Enough: How to Really Implement Workplace Violence Prevention‘ as well as numerous articles. He is also the creator of the Ultimate Workplace Violence Policymaker Software which makes it easy for companies to create a comprehensive workplace violence prevention policy in about an hour. He is an internationally recognized expert in workplace violence prevention and background screening and was recently recognized as being one of the Most Influential People in Security by Security Magazine. Mr. Nixon also teaches human resource management, organization development and management courses at several local universities. His Web Site is www.Workplaceviolence911.com and he can be reached via email at Barry@wvp911.com
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Dealing With the Aftermath of a Workplace Violence Incident
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