3 Things Small Employers Get Wrong About California's Workplace Violence Law

There's 3 things small employers get wrong about California's workplace violence law.

I hear these consistently from small employers like yourself, who are trying to figure out what to do with California's workplace violence prevention law.

Look, compliance with the law is not something where you can just say, don't commit workplace violence.

That's not what the law is about. Here’s what small employers are getting wrong, and doing so put’s their employees and their organization at risk.

It Doesn't Apply To Me Because I Only Have 4 Employees

Many small employers cite the small business exception as to why they don’t need to comply with the law’s requirements. But, they’re wrong.

It's not the number of employees you have that matters. You hear this all the time. If you have less than 10 employees, you’re exempt. But that’s wrong.

The decisive factor for compliance is whether your workplace, and your employees, are accessible to the public, to clients, customers, patients, vendors, contractors, people living in the neighborhood, and in your community.

If any one of these groups can come into your workplace, You've got to comply with the law, to establish and to implement your workplace violence prevention program.

For many small businesses, the most you’ve done so far is created a “thou shalt not” policy that says, don't commit workplace violence, or you can be subject to discipline ,up to an including termination.

But once you realize that the law applies to you, you’ll have to do a whole lot more.

So it's really important to understand what you’re required to do and to get started now.

The regulations for the law are going to be finalized at the end of this year.

And if you're found to have not implemented them, You're facing a major fine, and worse yet, if a violent incident occurs, you could be facing a 50% cash out of pocket penalty, or even a major 3rd party lawsuit, because you didn't take the steps you needed to do, to do your workplace violence prevention plan.

Now, this doesn't just apply to people, to your workplace.

It also applies if your employees go to someone else's workplace or their home, you need to have that policy in place as well.

I Hire My Own People, Violence Isn't An Issue.

Look, I get what you're coming from. You're building a small business. It's got a family atmosphere. Everybody's close.

So you don't think workplace violence is going to happen from your employees.

And probably you're right. But not for the reasons you think.

Because workplace violence that's caused by current or former employees makes up only 25% of the incident nationwide.

Your biggest risk, though, is from the people that you invite to your workplace as part of the normal course and scope of work that you do. I call those “invitees”, and that includes your clients, your customers, your patients, your vendors, your contractors, and members of the community.

All of those people, can be a source of workplace violence. And financially more devastating to your business, invitees can also be targeted by workplace violence, even from someone from the community.

And you have a legal responsibility to keep them safe.

If they're injured through workplace violence, they don’t file through worker's comp. They’ll bringing a lawsuit in civil court.

Where 5 or 6 figure lawsuit settlements are the norm.

That's a big financial exposure for your company.

I know this because I used to build those types of cases for plaintiff lawyers for 30 years.

I Can Just Use a Fill in the Blanks Plan and Call It a Day

There's a huge difference between what looks good on paper and what actually works to keep your employees and your organization safer in the real world.

California's workplace violence prevention law will do that if you put in the work the law requires.

Now, there's a few things that are absolutely essential to making sure that your workplace violence prevention plan works in the real world and not just one that looks good on paper.

— You must bring your employees on board in this process. This is not some kind of policy you dictate from on high. Employees must be involved in the process from the beginning.

And that's because they're the ones who are facing the risk.

Many employers don't know what it's like to be an employee in their organization. Many of you don't even know exactly what your employees do. You just know they do it.

So their input is critical to this process creating a plan that works to keep employees and your organization safer.

—You’ve got to conduct assessments for real world safety hazards that your employees face. And that includes your work practices related to the nature of their work.

It includes the physical environment, both internal and external, of your workplace.

And that’s also the case if you send employees out to other businesses or to customers homes.

You also have to identify what work practices and processes are helping to create those safety hazards, and determine how you can modify or even change those practices to reduce those safety risks.

—You’ve got to have an effective investigation process. An effective internal investigation process is absolutely the best way to make sure that employee sourced workplace violence doesn’t happen

With a good investigation process your employees know that you're actually trying to prevent violence. They know that you're doing this impartially and that you're really after determining what happened so that you can keep it from happening again.

Plaintiff attorneys would have me review an employer investigation to see if it was conducted to find out what happened or if they were just going through the motions.

—You need to have effective training of your employees, especially in strategies to avoid physical harm. There's a couple things to understand about real world violence that many of you just aren't familiar with enough to know (a good thing when you think about it).

Some employers try to address this important element of the law by sitting employees down with a computer course on “run, hide, and fight.” But the reality is that gun incidents in the workplace account for less than 1% of all workplace violence incidents. So you're really training them for something that isn't likely to occur.

Your focus should be on training them to address the other 99% of incidents.

Other employers like to focus on de-escalation or the wrongly named verbal judo.

But what I saw time and again, with all of those investigations I conducted is that violence happens without warning.

It's not telegraphed.

That punch comes out of nowhere, without warning, as a surprise attack that puts your employee on the ground with no chance to de-escalate.

That's the reality of violence.

So you have to prepare your employees for the types of violence they face and implement the best strategies to avoid physical harm.

Now if you're already doing all of those things as part of your workplace violence prevention plan, then your prevention plan will work for the real world.

And if you're just buying something online, and then substituting in your company name, into the blanks, that's not going to stand up to real world violence.

That’s a lot to get done especially if you didn't think you had to do this work but then suddenly realized that you have to do this work.

I'm going to have a great resource for you and I want you to keep an eye out for it.

I've got a workplace balance prevention, guidebook, specific to small employers, and an implementation package that if you take those 2 things and work through them, you're gonna be able to create and implement your own workplace violence prevention plan.