While devastating school violence draws mass media coverage, the sad truth is workplace violence happens everywhere. It runs the gamut: from unprofessional behavior manifesting as taunting, bullying, or harassment (sexual and other), to mental or physical abuse, suicide and homicide.

According to the National Safety Council’s 2016, based on data for 2013, no occupation is immune to workplace violence. Government (37,110 injuries, 128 deaths), Education and Health Services (22,590 injuries, 35 deaths) suffer greatest.

Why Employee Engagement Stands Up to Workplace Violence

Research has been able to show that a deep culture of employee engagement can stem the number and severity of workplace safety/violence incidents. When an organization’s leadership embrace engagement, are demonstrably caring, hold all people managers accountable for the same, develop people strategies and support training programs that instill values of cooperation and collaboration, and consult employees about policies and procedures, processes and problems, positive workplace relationships are inevitable. Confident their insights are valued employees will flag concerns and offer up solutions long before potential issues become full blown problems.

Unfortunately, that’s the exception. Not the rule. A 2012 survey found more than half of working Americans (52%) had seen, were aware of, or had experienced a violent event or an event that could lead to violence at their workplace. While 70% of employees who had not experienced workplace violence felt they were valued by their organizations, the number fell to 58% for those who reported they had. Digging deeper into findings, only half of the employers took disciplinary actions, 31% changed the physical environment to improve safety and 22% revised company policy.

Fast forward to 2018 and findings aren’t any better. A survey released by the union standing for elementary school teachers in Ontario, for instance, revealed 70% of educators have seen or experienced classroom violence and say it’s increasing and getting more severe. Yet almost a quarter say steps are rarely taken to prevent recurrence and three quarters rate actions taken as ineffective. Moreover, 22% who had experienced classroom violence did not report incidents because they were told not to, or feared repercussions.

In his book, Safety Excellence for Business, author Richard N. Knowles writes about culture as an outcome of all the interactions of people – with each other, with supervision, with management, with the systems and processes they work with and in the carrying out of every day “norms.” How interactions happen, how engagement takes place, and how deep it evolves are all key cogs in the workplace culture wheel – whether it’s spinning for safety, quality, morale, involvement, sustainability – the very same critical engagement processes need to happen.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health classifies workplace violence under four categories: criminal intent, worker-on-worker, customer/client (teachers/students, health workers/patients), and personal relationships (domestic abuse that spills into the work world).

Safety surveys combined with action planning send powerful messages to the workforce that workplace safety is a priority. In TalentMap’s experience, measuring employee perceptions is an important factor in building a safe workplace. The more employees are engaged in the safety process:

• the stronger employee engagement becomes
• morale and trust lift
• safety outcomes improve
• safety-related costs reduce
• profitability rises
• a positive corporate image advances among stakeholders.

Although confidentiality is critical for honest and open employee survey feedback, safety can override confidentiality; TalentMap has protocols in place to deal with sensitive situations.

It shouldn’t take something as horrific as a mass school shooting for business leaders and HR professionals to take a stand on safety in the workplace. The first step is to set up mechanisms for employees to report abusive behavior—the bigger step is to create a culture where reporting the behavior is supported and acted upon.

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• Every 15 seconds, a worker diesfrom a work-related accident or disease. 
• Every 15 seconds, 153 workershave a work-related accident.
• Every day, 6,300 people die because of occupational accidents or work-related diseases – more than 2.3 million deaths per year.
• Every year 317 million accidents occur globally; many of these resulting in extended absences from work.

These striking figures originate from the International Labour Organization, the U.N. agency that brings together government, employer and worker representatives from 187 member countries. “The human cost of this daily adversity is vast and the economic burden of poor occupational safety and health practices is estimated at 4 per cent of global Gross Domestic Product each year.”¹

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate 4,836 work-related fatalities and approximately 2.9 million injuries and illnesses were reported by private industry in 2015, and an additional 752,600 cases among state and local governments.²   Equally grim.

On a micro level, occupational health and safety issues can be an organization’s greatest nightmare. Beyond internal employee relation impacts and external reputational damages, studies by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work identify five main costs:

1. Productivity related to loss of output or production
2. Medical costs
3. Quality of life monetary valuations for pain and suffering
4. Administrative costs associated with reporting a workplace accident and applying for social security payments or worker compensation
5. Insurance premiums and compensation payments. ³

Keith Lykins, Sr VP of Employee Engagement at TalentMap, is a thought-leader in the field of workplace safety culture, employee engagement, and the links between the two. He has worked directly with many major North American utilities and manufacturing operations to measure and improve safety culture vis a vis employee engagement. Data gleaned from these initiatives show effective safety management systems require regular workplace measurements to help drive change and wrestle down substantial costs. Collecting injury statistics and keeping incident reports are simply, not enough. They provide a benchmark but, do not identify root causes.

Measuring employee perceptions is fundamental to building a safe workplace.  What this means is asking employees for predictive, “what-if” observations about certain safety-related behaviors in the workplace and how they (may or may not) impact safety outcomes. This exercise is referred to as TalentMap’s Employee Safety Culture and Perception Survey.

Focused exclusively on workplace safety, survey questions fall into three categories. The first, Safety Environment and Enablement, solicits insights about whether existing tools, technologies, equipment and the work environment in general, provide for a safe working experience. The second, Safety Program, Policies and Procedures, looks at whether safety information is common knowledge, easily accessible and demonstrably promoted. The third, Employee Involvement, Participation and Reporting, asks for experiential impressions as a participant or witness to good safety practices or violations.

Feedback guides direction

Safety Perception Surveys, combined with action planning, send powerful messages underscoring workplace safety as a priority. Findings highlight a confluence of strengths in some areas and opportunities for improvement in others. Examples of next-step actions might involve:

1. Senior management becoming (even) more visible and vocal around safety, in other words setting an example by walking the talk.
2. Consolidation and promotion of safety programs and policies – especially during the onboarding phase where new employees are learning the culture of the organization.
3. Addressing perceived imbalances in the dichotomy between work-load and safety.

Actionable outcomes, in turn, foster continuous organizational improvements, chief among them:

• Risk Mitigation
• Increased Productivity/Reduced Employee Downtime
• Higher Employee Engagement, Morale and Trust
• Reduced Safety-Related Costs/Increased Profitability
• Improved Organizational Image and Public/Customer Confidence

Indeed, there are several ways to look at occupational health and safety.  The biggest success factors, however, are galvanizing employee involvement and senior management commitment. The more employees and leadership engage in the safety process, the more safety outcomes and productivity will improve, and ultimately, numbers and severity of injuries will decline.

1 http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/safety-and-health-at-work/lang–en/index.htm

2 https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/osh.pdf

3 https://osha.europa.eu/en/tools-and-publications/publications/reports/executive-summary-estimating-the-cost-of-accidents-and-ill-health-at-work

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Every day 6,300 people die as a result of occupational accidents or work-related diseases – more than 2.3 million deaths per year. Roughly 317 million accidents occur on the job annually; many of these resulting in extended absences from work. The human cost of this daily adversity is enormous and the economic burden of poor occupational safety and health practices is estimated at 4% of global Gross Domestic Product each year.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, from April to July 2017, the number of employed youth 16 to 24 years old was 20.9 million. The most frequents type of injuries to these young workers include sprains, strains, and tears (more prevalent among young women) and cuts and lacerations (more prevalent among young men). While recent fatality statistics were unavailable, CFOI data indicate an average of 67 work-related deaths per year occurred among youths under 18 between 1992 to 1998.

Around the globe, 541 million young workers – which includes 37 million children in hazardous child labour – account for more than 15 per cent of the world’s labour force and suffer up to a 40% higher rate of non-fatal occupational injuries than adult workers older than 25.

On a micro level, occupational health and safety issues can be an organization’s greatest nightmare. Aside from serious employee relation issues and external reputational damage, work-related accidents affect:

• Productivity related to loss of output or production
• Medical costs
• Quality of life monetary valuations for pain and suffering
• Administrative costs associated with reporting a workplace accident and applying for social security payments or worker compensation
• Insurance premiums and compensation payments

Measuring the perceptions of full-time, part-time, contract and temporary summer employees is fundamental to building a safe workplace.  What this means is asking employees for predictive, “what-if” observations about certain safety-related behaviors in the workplace and how they (may or may not) impact safety outcomes.

Safety surveys, combined with action planning, send powerful messages underscoring workplace safety as a priority. The biggest success factors are galvanizing employee involvement and senior management commitment. The more employees and leadership engage in the safety process, the more safety outcomes and productivity will improve, and ultimately, numbers and severity of injuries will decline.

Join community leaders and other organizations promoting World Day for Safety and Health at Work this April 28.

• Speak out.
• Post web articles.
• Send tweets and emails.
• Takes steps to engage employees in the safety and health of your workplace.

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