RISK ASSESSMENT AND SAFETY TRAINING
A Workplace Violence Program for Health Care and Social Service Providers
Although we all wish it were not so, workplace violence is an unfortunate reality. Every year employees in health care and social service organizations across Canada are intimidated, harassed and often physically assaulted. The trend of workplace violence incidents has continued to rise steadily every year. Sadly, this is the reality of the complicated world in which we live.
Minimizing workplace violence requires an equal commitment from both the employer and the employee.
The employer must develop a philosophy of zero-tolerance harassment and this philosophy must be supported by policy and embraced and enforced by the highest levels of management. In addition, the employer must identify the potential risk of harm to the employee depending upon the occupational requirements and put all reasonable safeguards in place to mitigate the probability of workplace violence. The employer must provide the necessary training to ensure the employees are adequately prepared to identify and avoid potentially violent situations in the workplace.
Lastly, the employer provides the necessary physical training to equip the employee with the skills to effectively disengage from a physically assaultive incident. It is also important that the employer establishes a well-trained Critical Incident Stress Management team that can provide timely, professional and adequate defusing and debriefing to employees involved in a violent incident or any other incident which may create a stress response in the employee(s).
The employee however, has an equally important part to play in minimizing workplace violence. First, the employee must support the policy and philosophy of the organizational objectives in managing workplace violence.
Next, the employee embraces the workplace violence training and other initiatives that are provided. The employee diligently adheres to the zero-tolerance policies and as such; intervenes early in potential violations of the policy. All such incidents are properly reported to the organizations risk management specialist to ensure adequate review and that the necessary follow-up measures are taken in a timely manner.
One of the biggest failures of workplace safeguards is non-compliance by employees to follow established procedure and protocols. As such, procedures must ensure employee compliance with the procedural safeguards.
This Risk Assessment and Safety Training program will encourage both the employer and employee to change the way we think about our safety. The employee will leave the session with a challenge to foster and maintain an attitude of personal awareness and safety; an attitude that will dramatically reduce the risk of violence both on and off the job.
