As an employer, it’s important to learn that one of the most essential things your employees want from you is safety. There are times when this need becomes critical, such as an instance of assault, violent or otherwise, on your property. As such, to ensure their ongoing safety and keep your business as secure as possible, here are 4 steps you should take to handle a violent incident at work.
By Team Savant
Image: Charl Folscher
Offer a safe space for employees
One of the first pieces of advice any employee should follow if they have been assaulted is to remove themself from the area it happened and to have a safe space to process it. You should ensure that you’re able to provide that safe space. You should also have a functioning HR department process at the ready to help employees if they want to report and have a record of it. Make sure that you know what your responsibilities are.
Have a response at the ready
You should ensure that you have a practised team of security personnel who are able to take control of the situation, should there be any lingering threat. Simply having a secure response can help your team feel a lot safer, too. Incident response services handle more than just assaults and violent crimes. They also help with fires, floods, medical emergencies and more. Simply having a team who is ready to take over and secure an area can help you handle a situation much more confidently and calmly, rather than letting panic take over the decision-making process.
Think about what you can do to prevent it next time
You should always reflect on the circumstances that allowed any criminal incident to take place, and think about what you can do to stop it from happening again. This might mean investing in further security for the business, be it security lighting to help dissuade criminals, CCTV to ensure that evidence is captured, or secure access controls to make sure that unauthorised individuals cannot get on the property in future. Of course, if the person who committed the assault works for you, then removing them from their position, at a minimum, is recommended.
Handling the legal side
You should ensure that if your employee (or anyone else) who was insulted wants to press criminal charges against the person that assaulted them or report it, you should help them. Provide what witness testimony you can and turn over what evidence you have. Failing to do so can make you legally responsible. You might want to have a lawyer informed and waiting to act, just in case the individual does intend to make a case against your business as well. In some cases, it can be alleged that your business was negligent in its duty to the individual’s safety.
Any assault is a very serious matter and should be treated as such. Fail to take enough action and your employees will not feel safe, secure, or valued by their employer, which can be disastrous for your business in the long run.