3 Problems with Your Workplace Violence Prevention Plan and How to Fix Them for 2026

There are 3 main problems with most workplace violence prevention plans. Your plan included. 

How do I know this? Workplace violence has changed but prevention plans have not. Here's how to fix them for 2026.

Workplace Violence Prevention Plan Problem #1: There’s a New Source Type of Workplace Violence

One of the biggest issues that I see right now with workplace violence prevention plans is that there’s a new type of workplace violence that doesn’t fall under any of the 4 identified source types that workplace violence prevention plans focuses on.

And by that, I mean grievance driven violence.

The recent Brown University shooting along with the shooting of the MIT professor were grievance driven incidents of workplace violence.  As were the shootings of the CEO of United Healthcare, the legislators (current and former) from Minnesota, and Charlie Kirk too.

Grievance driven attacks are not like the 4 recognized source types of workplace violence that employers use to assess workplace violence safety hazards in their workplace violence prevention plans.

Grievance driven violence is really its own source type of workplace violence. Here’s why:

• The attackers are smart. 
• They are patient. 
• They plan their violence like crazy. 
• They do dry runs before they attack. 
• They’re dispassionate when they commit their acts of violence.
• They may have no direct connection to the individuals and organizations they attack.

And most importantly, the act of violence is their end goal. It's what this type of attacker is hoping to achieve from the start.

Looking at the 4 traditional source types of workplace violence addressed in workplace violence prevention plans you can see why grievance driven violence is different. 

Workplace violence source type 1, is community originated violence. In theory, grievance driven violence might fall under community based violence, but there are differences.

Community driven violence is typically committed by someone from the community who enters the workplace to commit a separate crime, and then engages in violence. Robbery, burglary, and theft are often the underlying crime.

The attacker goes into a bar to rob the bar, and then shoots a patron during the commission of the robbery. The same with a convenience store.

Preventing community sourced workplace violence is about lessening the risk of the crime the attacker seeks to commit, and then looking at how violence might flow from the crime.

Community sourced workplace violence might also include violence caused by mentally ill person who becomes aggressive after entering a business’s parking lot or workplace.

In community sourced violence, the attacker’s focus is on the crime to be committed, and not on the act of violence. The violence that arises is a byproduct of the crime. This is true even when the crime, is committed on the spur of the moment. The act of violence is secondary to the crime, and not something that the attacker goes to any great lengths to plan. 

The violence itself is not the main objective. It’s just a byproduct of other actions.

With grievance driven violence, violence is the main objective. It’s the reason for the person’s actions.

Source type 2 workplace violence, which I like to call invitee sourced violence, typically involves clients, customers, patients, vendors, and contractors for your business.

These types of workplace violence incidents also are not particularly planned out. There’s often a confrontation that leads to the act of violence. On occasion the violence is planned, but most often it’s a reaction to an interaction that leads to this type of violence.

Invitee violence is not typically carried out with the violence as the end goal. It’s typically a result of someone lashing out over a given set of circumstances. 

Maybe the person, as a client or customer, doesn't like the results that you achieved  or the ways they’re being treated.  it's a patient, maybe comes in and is having a psychotic breakdown. All of those types of situations fall under invitee violence.

Invitee violence is as much a challenge to prevent as any source type of workplace violence.

But it's not quite the same thing as grievance driven violence, which requires a different approach to prevent.

The 3rd of the 4 source types of workplace violence is coworker, or former coworker, violence.

While it’s true that a former coworker might be angry at their perceived treatment by an organization, but the attacker typically does not plot to commit this violence in an in-depth way.

Unlike those who commit grievance driven violence, coworker or former coworkers just show up at workplace without recon, or doing practice runs because they're already familiar with the workplace.

Most current and former coworkers who commit violence just show up at the workplace and immediately launch right into their attack.

The 4th source type of workplace violence is violence committed by someone that is connected to an employee, but doesn't work at the place of business.

And those workplace violence incidents usually start as a private incident that then spills over into the workplace. And oftentimes those incidents are related to domestic violence.

While on some level this type of violence might be planned, It’s more often spontaneous in nature. The abuser knows his ex's work schedule, knows the make and model of her car, knows where she parks, and can find her there in the parking lot when she comes out of work.

And the reasons behind the four source types of workplace violence, typically differ from grievance driven workplace violence too.

The 4 source types of workplace violence attacks are often driven either by impulse, or by money.

Community violence, especially robbery, burglary, or theft is about money.

Invitee violence is related to the type of service, whether it’s from a doctor, a lawyer, or a restaurant, that the attacker receives, and the belief that there’s some kind of problem with that service. It can also be due to paranoia or other mental health driven issues that affect the invitee.

Coworker violence is driven in part by the differing personalities and the perception of how the workplace handles interpersonal issues that arise.

These types of attackers often felt bullied by a coworker, especially a supervisor,, and that no one at the company did what needed to be done to address the bullying, so the attacker addresses it himself.

And private lives workplace violence are often related to domestic violence that’s happening in the employee’s private life. And they can also be related to money too.

Substance abuse often drives family disputes over money. As does child custody, and child support payments. 

Generally, violence from the 4 source types of workplace violence arise out of opportunity. But, grievance-based violence is not opportunity driven. Though opportunity can set a plan into motion.

Grievance driven violence is planned. And it's practiced. Grievance driven workplace violence attackers will even travel great distances to commit their attacks.

Like the shooting death of the CEO of United Healthcare, and the shooting of the Brown University students and the MIT professor. Those attackers traveled a great distance to carry out their attacks.

Workplace Violence Prevention Plan Problem #2: Your Plan Has Minimal Employee Involvement and Is Not Based Upon How Violence Occurs

The second most common workplace violence prevention plan failure occurs because there’s not enough employee input. And that problem is exacerbated by the fact that those creating the plan lack an understanding of how violence occurs, leading to the wrong approaches to resolve workplace violence safety hazards.

California requires that your workplace violence prevention plan be developed with employee input, including employee feedback of the plan, and employee training requests. 

This approach runs counter to other workplace related matters, such as prohibiting sexual harassment, where employers typically like to implement them from the top down with a “thou shall not commit” policy.

Workplace violence prevention in order to be effective requires the opposite approach. From the employees upwards, which prevents too narrow a focus. 

Employers tend to think of workplace violence as arising solely from source type 3, coworkers and former employees.

But that's only a fraction of workplace violence incidents. 

Employees, because they’re on the front lines of workplace violence, have a much better sense of where their safety threats come from.

And they are the only ones who will know if they face a safety risk from a personal connection from outside the workplace.

Employee input is also critical to identifying approaches to correct known safety hazards.

Employee interviews are critical to developing that part of your workplace violence prevention plan.

Don't generalize the process of addressing safety hazards.

Employers cannot look at the generic safety hazards that are identified in California’s law for workplace violence, or in some boilerplate plan, and use that information to come up with plans to remedy those safety hazards, unless they’re actually specific to your employees too.

And the only way to know if that’s the case, is to ask your employees.

In fact, California requires that your workplace violence prevention plan be specific to your employees and the threats they face. It’s the law.

So if you have not developed your workplace violence prevention plan based upon employee input, you’ll need to go back over your plan, and the refine the process used to create your plan, so that it is specific to the safety threats your employees face.

Then you can come up with your approaches to address those safety threats, and then you can come up with the types of training that is necessary for them to be safe from those threats.

In addition, employers make assumptions about workplace violence, and violence in general when creating their prevention plan. And these assumptions are not based upon the way violence actually happens.

The vast majority of workplace violence incidents don’t involve an active shooter. Nor do they involve co-workers bullying each other. But, many workplace violence plans focus on those two scenarios to the detriment to their employees’ safety. 

The majority of workplace violence incidents involve non-fatal assaults. And women are targeted in those types of attacks almost twice as often as men.

Because your female and male employees may face entirely different workplace violence hazards you have to uncover and address those different safety hazards.

You've got to break down each safety hazard, and look at what can be done to make this safer. And then come up with an approach to remedy each type of safety hazard your different employees face.

Workplace Violence Prevention Plan Problem #3: Failing to Include Effective Strategies for Your Employees to Avoid Physical Harm

The third problem with workplace violence prevention plans, particularly in California, where this is mandated by the new workplace violence prevention law, is that employers are not identifying and training employees in effective strategies to avoid physical harm because they don’t understand the ways that violence happens. 

Unless you know enough about how violence occurs, you're really not going to know what strategies work best to prevent that physical harm.

Violence can be random or it can be targeted and it often occurs without warning.

So your employees strategies to avoid physical harm must go beyond de-escalation or simply trying to avoid a threat to their safety. Your employees need to address violence as it happens without warning.

Now, there's a lot of different ways that can be handled.

But to do so you've got to rethink how you approach strategies to avoid physical harm.

The end goal isn’t just to lessen the risk, it's to avoid physical harm and that includes when an attack occurs without warning.

When you think about strategies to avoid physical harm, you need to think about different potentially violent situations.

There’s a need for your employees to recognize that they're facing a potential safety threat before it becomes a threat.

That would be training in situational awareness, which gives them the opportunity to recognize that there's a potential safety threat and how to avoid it, or at least be prepared to address it.

Maybe your employees face situations where they can de-escalate a tense situation. Someone who is angry, but where there's a chance your employees can work with them to help them calm down.

Maybe that entails training them to bring in a coworker to help calm the situation, since there’s safety in numbers. These types of trainings can help in situations where de-escalation might work, but it doesn't work all the time.

And that’s because attacks often just happen. No warning. No advanced notice. 

So your employees might need training in changing the dynamics of an attack, which allows them to take away an attacker's initial advantage.

That's not easy to do, but it can be the difference between avoiding physical harm, and being hospitalized or treated at the ER for a serious injury or even the difference between life and death.

And also training in self-defense, because if your employees do nothing when attacked they’ll be seriously physically harmed. So they've got to be able to defend themselves or others too.

California believes very strongly that self-defense and defense of others is appropriate for the workplace when necessary.

Understanding these three problems will help you as you review and assess your workplace violence prevention plan for effectiveness as required each year.

I want to wish you all a happy and healthy new year!

And here's to a safe 2026 for your employees and your organization's bottom line.

I’ll keep you updated as California finishes up its final revisions to the workplace violence prevention law.