[00:00:00] :  this show is brought to you by safety warning. The following broadcast contains adult language, adult content, frank safety discussions and stories that might sound unbelievable. But believe me every one of those stories we didn't start the safety, we're going to fight and we're going to talk for our families for our community. I've been on several projects over the years where we've had workers threatened supervisors and in some cases beat up supervisors, especially uh, those in safety, right? And the safety professionals probably knew about it, but they couldn't do anything to get it addressed by management or anybody else. So where are the most common areas? Workplace violence? Usually if you're in contact with the public, if you have money being exchanged, picking up passengers, delivery passengers, uh, good services, that sort of thing. Have mobile workplaces, work with persons and healthcare, social services, where criminal justice settings working alone or in small numbers working late at night or early in the morning, working in high crime areas guarding valuable property or possessions or working in some kind of community based setting such as a drug rehab or something like that group home. The difference between this and other situations dealing with workplace violence that these are areas where it's predictable. Where you may have some type of way of structuring your work area controlling the hazard. For example, putting people behind glass, bulletproof glass, maybe having security guards, buzzers to let people in uh, with the rideshare apps, making sure that you're picking up the correct passengers things of that nature. You may not be able to control working at night or early in the morning but you can take some precautions so for example no one goes out alone, you always have a buddy. Uh keeping things that are lock and key things of that nature Under the Department of Labor directive CPL 0 2-1 dash oh 58. I know it kills people and I quote things like this. OSHA manages all this stuff as a general duty clause violation. What does that mean for review? You have to meet four conditions to be guilty or in violation of OSHA's general duty clause which states that as an employer you have to supply a safe and healthful workplaces for your recognized hazards. So you need to meet four conditions. One is that the employer failed to keep work the workplace free of a hazard. Number two the hazard was recognized number three the hazard was causing or likely to cause that for a serious physical harm. Not talking something incidental and there was a feasible and useful method to correct the hazard. You need to meet all four conditions. What we just described those types of work environments, easy to do. Now what about the other stuff? You can protect people up to a certain point with that stuff, let's say that you have a worker who is prone to violence, oceans inclined to refer to that stuff to your HR department or outside agency like E. E. O. C. Law enforcement, something along those lines, chances are unless you meet those four conditions it's not going to be a general duty clause. So what are we looking at here? You're a co worker, you're a manager of someone. What are you looking for in your workers? One attendance issues to quality or productivity issues. Three inappropriate or disproportionate reactions to things. Some type of inconsistency whether in work or they're happy one day. Sad the next. A lack of focus uh safety issues for health and hygiene changes, changed behavior, evidence of drug or alcohol use. Just overall stressed or always stressed that the avoidance of responsibility or consequences or an unshakable depression. So you need to go and talk to your workers at a certain point interact with them? That's really the only way you're going to be able to evaluate this stuff or listen to your other coworkers? Hey did you hear what? So and so said and did you see what? So and so did that sort of thing. There are usually three levels of violence from co workers. You have the level one which are the early warning signs and these are very that's concerning to me because I think most of us have experienced this in the workplace but who knew it was like a leading indicator of workplace violence that could come. So what are the other warning signs? Level one intimidation or bullying discourteous or disrespectful behavior if they're uncooperative or verbally abusive. So if you're in HR and if the state law allows it because that's usually what governs human resources issues. All this stuff you documented, hey, we have some early warning signs. Level one indicators of intimidation or bullying. You have level two, you have an escalation of that situation. They become more argumentative, deliberate policy violations, sabotage, verbalizing things wishing to hurt people, send threatening messages written or verbal and seeing themselves as a victim on me versus them. So for example, let's say you're on a construction site and a contractor that could be any trade, but certain trades are more likely to have this happen. We don't, we didn't intend to follow any of these rules like fall protection. So you're messing with us and we're the victims here because you guys are actually enforcing rules like that door fall protection at six ft or higher on an unguarded edge leading edge, You have to be tied off. You have to have a handrail and all this stuff, right? We normally see level one and level two. Those are very common in the construction industry. Some of the other workplaces, disaster response places. That's another uh, uh thing. Level three is an actual event meaning that you have people with suicidal threats, physical fights, destruction of property, display of extreme rage and or using weapons or other materials to harm others, How do we manage this? Especially if we're a safety professional, number one, you need documentation and reporting all this stuff has to be documented and reported otherwise. Everyone will forget that this happened? Whether willfully forget or just forget that all this stuff happened because people are not normally focused on really negative things right. If the threats are credible or if they're being not being addressed in your organization and no one's addressing them, you might have a need for bringing in someone from the outside that maybe someone from your corporate office law enforcement. Even when someone's making repeated threats, if someone is issuing terroristic threats, that's definitely a call to law enforcement as I tell everyone because smartphones and other devices are ubiquitous meaning they're everywhere. You need to really control yourself. If you're feeling like you need to do harm to others, you might need some canceling and help. If you're getting to that point, you're able to be self aware enough to recognize these behaviors in yourself. Maybe it's time for you to get out and talk to somebody. If you're an employer, you notice all these things, it's really important that you go and manage them and according to what the law is and my experience, very few employers want to manage these things. If at all, then it spills into a major situation. What are some of the effects that this could have other than her employees. And now it becomes a notional affordable And it goes on that 300 log and you have insurance rates going up and you have employees heard. Of course, that's the worst thing. What what else do you have employees that are stressed out? They'll quit on you, you'll have high turnover rates, you'll have lawsuits and litigation with this. You have um some moral hazard of sorts because now you're not addressing these things, how would you like it if one of these coworkers went and bought your publicly traded company and they show up at the stockholders meeting? Oh, you're not gonna believe this. These people aren't addressing this or are they trying to address with this? I'll tell you what, I've been involved in a couple of situations for people that have actually done that. It hasn't really turned out so well for their managers, they ended up having to quit because the manager, uh not that not the manager equipped with the employee quit because they got harassed out of the situation, but the whole thing is, is documenting and then coming up with your own ways of managing this, avoiding a coworker might be an appropriate way of handling this. Uh never being alone with a coworker. We've had to do this on a couple of our jobs. So a couple of our projects where we don't talk to a certain people because they are hotheaded. So everything goes into uh by email, text message, anything like that. So things are documented what you're telling them. The other thing is this what ah that could be being done on you as well. So you gotta watch yourself everybody calm down. Especially nowadays workplace violence. Unfortunately, this type of battle is one of the major ones in the ongoing safety word, especially when you consider levels one or two, where you're dealing with words basically When it gets to level three and then that's a hot war, you got to figure out what you're gonna do with that. There's all different types of trading. Active shooter training is one of them self defense. Uh, coming up with controls for yourself. Like I mentioned, avoidance, eliminating that hazard through avoidance. What you don't want to do is take the law into your own hands unless you absolutely have to because guess what? You get folks out there that say, well, I'm gonna commit violence on them while these sort of people have a way of making themselves into the victim often. So you think you're protecting yourself when in reality you'll be the one in trouble for safety wars. This is jim is your safety training old stale in Hackney is your safety trainer? Still preaching a warped version of behavior based safety. How about safety training that actually addresses your hazards in your workplace is, and it's not standardized bologna from 25 years ago. Contact the safety ward's team at safety words dot com or call jim proposal at 845 to 69577. To remember if you're receiving this message, you are the solution to unsafe workplaces. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the host and its guests, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within this podcast are only examples. It should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information, assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the position of the company. 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