Workplace Violence Safety and Awareness

LITERATURE REVIEW

Literature Review Chapter: Workplace Violence, Safety, and Awareness

Introduction of the Literature Topic

Workplace violence occurs when the threat of the safety of the employees exists. It can be various types such as verbal abuse, physical threats, or job-related threats (Occupational Safety and Health Administration, 2002). It is reported that almost 2 million U.S. workers face workplace violence in any form each year. There is an increased risk for some employees such as those who deliver goods, those who have to work alone, especially during late night or are at jobs in crime areas. A high need for safety education to the workers and the employers is detected so that the workplace could be made secure. Even if there is still any prevalence of this issue, there should be remedial procedures and best practices to ensure an accurate investigation.

Focus and Purpose of the Paper

The Purpose of Literature Review

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive literature review about workplace violence, safety, and its awareness. The understanding of existing explorations would give a clear insight into the selected topic. The previous research is an indication that the relevant studies have been carried out to study the particular area by well-known methods and calculation scales that provide authentic results. Therefore, it is intended that building of knowledge through the conduction of literature review is done for the highlighted topic.

Search Strategy and Criteria for Inclusion

The information was primarily searched on the Wilmington University Library database. The articles that were searched were peer-reviewed and scholarly articles about workplace violence, safety, and awareness. The keywords used for this search were ‘workplace violence’ and ‘workplace safety.’ Other websites explored for this purpose included Google Scholar, SHRM.org, Manager Skills.org, and OSHA.org. The inclusion criteria were peer review and scholarly articles, the articles that discussed workplace violence and safety only, and those who were not older than 1998.

Organization of Literature Review

The literature review is organized in topical and chronological order. The issue’s pervasiveness is discussed with relevance to the articles’ dates, proceeding with its safety and awareness. The main issue would be elucidated, and its preventive measures would be reflected through secondary research of scholarly articles. Also, the significance of awareness about workplace violence would be particularized to be evaded in the future.

Literature Review

Workplace Violence

The workplace is now considered a battleground for violence since people from different backgrounds come to a single pace where conflicts are inevitable. Chenier (1998) indicated that the perpetrator of the violence is mostly unknown in the workplaces since daily exposure to violence has become common. It could be in the form of harassment and hostility from fellow employees or even the top management. The issue has taken a serious position in the employees’ safety and health hazards in a working space. The most common areas of violence that OSHA has mentioned, particularly in healthcare and social services, are psychiatric facilities, emergency departments, pharmacies, community care facilities, drug abuse treatment departments, etc.

Further, the employers have mostly denied that any such problem exists, which is the most common cause of this issue still being unresolved completely. A few decades ago, data from The Center for Disease Control and Prevention Statistics showed that 760 on-the-job murders were counted for 1980 (Paul & Townsend, 1998). It has been frequently regarded as the primary reason for work-related stressors for the majority of employees. However, this research cited some of the distinct characteristics of perpetrators of workplace violence entailing a male aging 25 to 50 years, has been working in the firm for some time, has a background of violence, adopts an insensitive behavior towards people and matters, is a loner and without family, etc.

More studies have specified that hospitals have observed patients who have been facing workplace aggression of some kind for some time. Stress and pressures have built up that is dangerous for the employees’ healthy cognitive functioning and have been conducive to the structuring of power imbalance. Nurses have not escaped this situation and have faced verbal abuse from 82% to 96% (DelBel, 2003). Survey results showed nurses’ beliefs that it has led to low job performance, high absenteeism, and high turnover.

Harmful workplace behaviors were identified by a study where workplace hostility was seen over-arching on four common features: the capacity to inflict harm on others, the target’s need to evade the situation, the intent of the committer, and tenacious nature of harm (Selden & Downey, 2012). The investigation was carried out with two pilot studies with a small convenience sample of 42 participants. The results exhibited that three subscales related to workplace hostility were meddling with work, rejection, and deterioration. Top management employers posed stress on the workers, but the workers felt a greater desire to leave when they felt exclusion.

It is also testified that the employees’ threats were also received based on their individualities, handling styles, attitudes, or attending violence training. For this attestation, a survey was conducted among the participants from psychiatric wards, elder care, and prison services (Andersen et al., 2019). The results revealed that participants who rated high on the extroversion and introversion scale were highly prone to work-related threats. The acceptance attitude was also statistically significant; however, associations between coping styles and violence were relatively smaller. Supervisors were found to play an integral role in preventing workplace violence and effectively reducing the relevant stress.

Safety

It is imperative to know what employees themselves feel about their workplace safety so that self-protection measures could be easily devised. A study was conducted to examine the employees’ perception about workplace safety and abuse experiences (Jenkins, Fisher & Hartley, 2012). The participants were 16 years or older and were sampled for the interviews. The results disclosed that 7% of the respondents were worried that someone at the workplace wants to attack them, and 4% experienced violence in reality. Another interesting finding was they perceived their neighborhood and traveling places as‘ very safe’ or ‘somewhat safe’ while they felt that they needed some protective measures at their workplaces.

If the workforce needs to be productive, it requires a safe working place free of violence. OSHA Act 1970 necessitates the workplaces to be free of organizational hazards that might cause physical harm (Tenley, Bergmar & Moore, 2019). Employers should formulate safety policies that could be currently applied to the employees and management of the firm. The management should know what type of behaviors and employees should be considered a concern, the offenses that would imply workplace violence, and strategies deployed to encounter employee misconduct. Employee assistance programs could prove effective in this regard, along with a protocol of safe termination of employees who have been noticed committing violent acts.

Another contemporary issue at workplaces that needs close attention is domestic violence at workplaces. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated that 1.3 million women are domestic violence victims, especially by their intimate partners, which hinders their job performance (Maurer, n.a.). 65% of the companies do not have policies that might address the issue. Recently, it has been stressed that families need to report domestic violence to social services and healthcare communities for the victims’ better physical and mental health. Safety for such employees should be ensured by implementing policies about off-duty misconduct and an action that would raise concerns if it disrupts the office’s normal functioning. The management should include measures in the prevention program that encapsulates identification, treatment, selection, and avoidance. Risk factors could be controlled with progressive action control methods, and a response action plan should be communicated with the employees to bring it to top management’s attention.

Awareness

Awareness could be the only best possible solution to the issue at hand since employers must inherit knowledge about actions that are considered workplace violence and how they should be tackled. No law in any state allows workplace e violence, and this should be noted by all the employees of organizations in any country. The cases could be tried in court, which can jeopardize the firm reputation. Hence, a zero-tolerance policy should be a rule of thumb for all formal organizational dogmas (Bruce & Nowlin, 2011). There should be clear specifications about accepted and non-accepted behaviors in the workplace. Awareness through proactivity is proposed since the protection of employees and clients is the supreme objective of organizations these days. Training, stress management sessions, mediation sittings, and record-keeping could be helpful in this regard.

Awareness should also encompass being vigilant about the warning signs at a workplace (Manager Skills, n.a.). It is not widely accepted that workplace violence could ever be experienced by anyone since the safest places are home and workplace (Safety Focus, 2015). Employers and higher management should be watchful about changes in employee’s behavior and personality, likely to be due to financial problems, decreasing productivity, working habits, excessive laziness, and frequent absenteeism. Proactive steps for such risky indication should include conducting a gap analysis, training sessions for all employees, and conducting a threat assessment for susceptibilities.

The same preventive measures for increased awareness about workplace violence have been suggested by Nielson (2019), suitable for application in today’s modern corporate culture. Prevention is the first and foremost step for assessing the organizational culture. Taking feedback from the employees and taking references, using the firm policies as a weapon for protection and training are key features for responsiveness.

Summary

A thorough literature review about workplace violence, safety, and awareness revealed that for the workforce to be satisfied from their jobs, be highly predictive and show less absenteeism, it is vital to keep on the lookout for workplace violence. It is majorly learned that despite no wide acceptance that workplaces could be dangerous, it is becoming more imperative than before. Top management considers it a serious concern, especially in modern times where globalization and diversification are inescapable. The common points from the literature review are characteristics of the perpetrator, his intent to inflict harm on the victim, prevalence of domestic violence and its appearance in the workplaces, supervisors’ role in taking action against the misconduct, making working places safe by integration of employee assistance programs, and training of employees and the employers regarding workplace violence. A slight conflicting aspect in the literature review was noticed that listed wide negligence of workplace violence whereas the employees’ perception about their workplace was the opposite; they considered their homes and neighborhoods safer than their current employment places.