A plan will benefit your organization.

From the California Chamber of Commerce 

California employers need to be aware that they will, beginning July 1, 2024, be required to comply with Senate Bill (SB) 553 — California’s workplace violence prevention standard (applicable to nearly all California employers and is under the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health’s (Cal/OSHA) jurisdiction) — which includes:

• Establishing, implementing, and maintaining a written “workplace violence prevention plan”
• Training your workforce on your workplace violence prevention plan
• Utilizing a violent incident log for each instance of workplace violence involving your employees
• Record retention.

Outside of complying with state law, the opportunity to both minimize harm to employees and potentially save lives should an instance of workplace violence occur is reason enough to develop a workplace violence prevention plan. There are multiple components to the requirement — 13 different elements (click here for the list), to be exact — and it helps to understand how each contributes to a safer and more productive workplace. 

Identifying Responsible Personnel
Seasoned HR professionals recognize that when everyone “owns” a policy, procedure, or plan, then no one truly owns it. In other words, it is important that every organization account for who’s in charge of the workplace violence prevention plan — and that’s why the first element required in an organization’s plan is listing the names or job titles of the people responsible for its implementation.

One of the simplest ways to meet this requirement is to assemble a multi-discipline group within your organization. This is often referred to as the Crisis Management Team (CMT), and often consists of six to eight individuals from the HR, legal, security and risk management departments, as well as upper management. While it is always a good idea for employees to have multiple people to whom they can direct their concerns, it is important that the team selects a leader or face of the plan. 

Involving Employees
Much-overlooked assets in many organizations are the eyes, ears, and experiences of employees, who often can see hazards and potential threats that management sometimes cannot. Employees might be aware of such things as:

• Time of day when shoplifters are more likely to come into a business;
• Certain entrances and exits that have blind spots where a potential intruder can hide; or
• f there’s a former employee who’s been coming through the parking lot checking license plate numbers. 

Stated simply, employees often have a wealth of information about where and how a business is vulnerable to violence. 

This is why the second plan element — procedures for obtaining employees' and authorized representatives' input when developing and implementing the plan — is crucial. 

Also, beyond the compliance aspect, involving employees in the development of your plan offers them peace of mind. Remember, under the new law, workplace violence is defined as any act of violence or threat of violence that occurs in a place of employment, including:

• The threat or use of physical force against an employee that results in, or has a high likelihood of resulting in, injury, psychological trauma, or stress, regardless of whether the employee sustains an injury.
• An incident involving the threat or use of a firearm or a dangerous weapon.

In other words, your employees’ wellbeing can be severely harmed by incidents of workplace violence. A major step toward preventing an incident is helping your employees understand that the organization not only takes the risk of workplace violence seriously, but also is working hard to address and prevent it. Nothing says, “We take workplace violence seriously” more than inviting your employees’ input in the development of the official workplace violence prevention plan.

Also keep in mind that another required element of your workplace violence prevention plan is procedures to review the plan's effectiveness and revise it as needed — including, but not limited to, reviewing the plan at least annually, reviewing when a deficiency is observed or becomes apparent, and reviewing after a workplace violence incident. And employee involvement and communication should be ongoing, meaning it should be incorporated throughout these reviews and revisions. Why is that? Because your business changes, your employees change, and social norms around what is & is not acceptable change. Including your employees in the plan’s regular updating and modifying ensures that your employees wealth of information and knowledge is always accounted for.

Customizing the Plan (Identifying, Responding to, Evaluating, Correcting Hazards)
We can all probably agree that what works for one business isn’t likely to work for all businesses. Customization of your workplace violence prevention plan — which essentially covers several statutorily required plan elements potentially saves lots of wasted time, effort, and money. 

When working your way through creating the procedures for these elements, the factors to consider include:

• How often do my employees interact with the public?
• Are we a cash business?
• Do we find ourselves interacting with unstable individuals?
• Does our work involve our employees going into the homes of others?
• Are we collecting debts?
• Do our employees work in small numbers or alone?
• Is alcohol being served in our working locations?
• Do our employees work late-night or early morning hours?

Once we have identified the violence risk we incur on a regular basis, we can make sure that the plan we develop addresses those potential risks and minimizes the hazards.

Also important is the requirement to identify and correct new hazards, because businesses change and evolve, as do threats and hazards. Perhaps your business alters hours during the holiday or summer seasons. Or maybe you’ve had a reduction in force, and there are fewer employees working per shift. These are just a couple of reasons to evaluate the changing needs of your workplace violence prevention plan.

Employee Training
Your workplace violence prevention plan must include procedures to develop and provide training under the new law, which must cover topics such as the plan itself, how employees participate in plan implementation and development, how to report workplace violence incidents, hazards specific to employees’ jobs, and documentation requirements.

The law requires training to take place upon the violence prevention plan's initial implementation and annually thereafter, as well as when there are changes to the violence prevention plan and/or when a new threat has been recognized by the employer. 

Now, the initial response to this requirement might be, “Oh great, more required training!” But your organization certainly will benefit by being compliant training-wise.

The first benefit is that proper training leads to less severe outcomes, as there are many documented incidents where violence was made worse (more victims or more serious injuries, for example) because of ill-advised or inappropriate responses to potential or actual violence (a few examples include an employee getting injured while attempting to stop a shoplifter; an employee who hears sounds of a struggle and walks toward the sound to investigate; or an employee being threatened by a colleague but not telling anyone and an incident of violence occurs at a later time).

And second, employees are likelier to acquiesce to our expectations when we make those expectations clear, plain and explicit — which means that when you train your employees what to report, to whom it should be reported and how to respond, they will most often do as they’ve been trained. And this following of protocol, again, means that should an instance of workplace violence occur, the outcome is likely to be less severe than if employees are not trained.

Keep in mind that the training materials must be appropriate in content and vocabulary, accounting for your workforce's educational level, literacy, and language — and remember that employers must maintain employee training records for one year. 

Documentation and Reporting of Incidents
The new law requires covered employers to investigate all incidents of workplace violence, and each employer’s workplace violence prevention plan also must include procedures to accept and respond to reports of workplace violence, as well as procedures for communicating with employees regarding workplace violence matters, including, but not limited to how:

• An employee can report a violent incident, threat or other workplace violence concern to the employer or law enforcement without fear of reprisal.
• Employee concerns will be investigated, and how employees will be informed of the investigation's results and any corrective actions.

While not part of the workplace violence prevention plan, it’s important to note that the results of these investigations must be kept in a log and retained for a minimum of five years. Employers must remove identifying and all medical information from the log.

While this requirement may feel daunting and a bit overwhelming, a closer look reveals that completing the incident log can assist your CMT members in reviewing past incidents to ultimately evaluate your plan’s effectiveness and assess your vulnerabilities, as well as to note patterns and determine if certain practices should be discontinued.

For those of us in the workplace violence space, SB 553 was a long time in the making, and come July 1, 2024, it will be upon us. Like it or loathe it, you need to be in compliance with it — and given the workplace violence prevention plan’s comprehensive nature, it's important to start developing your plan immediately rather than waiting until July 1.

Once you’re in compliance, you might find that many of the plan’s components make for a safer and more productive workplace.