Does California Require Workplace Violence Training on Avoiding Physical Harm? 5 Straight Answers for Small Employers

Quick Answers 

• Does California require it? Yes. Labor Code 6401.9(e)(2)(D) requires employers to train employees on strategies to avoid physical harm.
• How often? When your plan is first established, then every year. Also whenever a new hazard is found or the plan changes.
• Why? Because workers keep getting hurt and killed on the job, and a plan on paper won’t protect your employees once an attack starts.
• What are they? Practiced actions that keep an employee from being physically hurt: situational awareness, de-escalation, communicating safety concerns, the buddy system, parking lot safety, changing the dynamics of an attack, violent incident response teams, and self-defense.
• Which work best? Situational awareness first, followed by strategies matched to each employee’s actual job hazards and practiced until they’re automatic.

I've spent 30 years investigating what happened after someone got hurt at work by a violent incident. Many of those cases were built for plaintiff attorneys suing the employer.

Here's what I found out while conducting about 12,000 witness interviews: The employee who got hurt seldom was trained in what to do the moment things turned violent. Employers may have had a plan on paper, but they didn’t work with their employees on strategies to avoid physical harm.

California now says that has to change.

Does California require training in strategies to avoid physical harm?

Yes. California Labor Code section 6401.9 requires nearly every employer in the state to train employees on strategies to avoid physical harm.

The law says the employer "shall provide effective training" covering, among other things:

"Workplace violence hazards specific to the employees' jobs, the corrective measures the employer has implemented, how to seek assistance to prevent or respond to violence, and strategies to avoid physical harm." — Cal. Labor Code § 6401.9(e)(2)(D)

Notice the words "specific to the employees' jobs." A generic video doesn’t cut it. Your front-desk person and your delivery driver face different safety hazards. Their training has to reflect that.

The training must also include a chance for employees to ask questions of someone who knows your plan. And their questions can help guide you in identifying the most effective strategies for your employees.

And if you're a small business, don't assume you're exempt from training your employees in effective strategies to avoid physical harm. The small-employer exemption only covers places with fewer than 10 employees that are not accessible to the public. If customers, clients, or patients walk through your door, the law applies to you.

How often must training on strategies to avoid physical harm be provided?

At least once a year. The law requires training when your workplace violence prevention plan is first established, and annually after that.

You also need to revisit your training on strategies to avoid physical harm when:

• A new or previously unrecognized workplace violence hazard is identified
• Changes are made to your plan

One more thing. Keep records of every training session: date, content, trainer, the trainer’s qualifications, and who attended. If Cal/OSHA asks, a training you can't prove is a training that didn't happen.

Why does California require training in strategies to avoid physical harm?

Because when violence happens at work, your employee may have to deal with the attack alone, without any help. 

An assault is over in seconds. Even in a city like San José, police took more than 7 minutes on average to reach the most urgent calls. And only 39% of workplace violence is ever reported to police at all.

There’s no checklist that can work under that type of stress. And a plan that exists on paper does nothing to keep your employees safe from a real world attack. It’s knowing what to do, and when to do it that actually keeps your employees safe.

California’s law was driven by two mass shootings: the 2021 VTA rail yard shooting in San Jose and the 2023 Monterey Park ballroom shooting. But shootings are the headlines. Assaults are the everyday reality.

When implemented effectively it will reduce not just gun violence in the workplace, but assaults, and threats too and the harms that they cause to your employees and your organization. 

The national numbers explain the rest:

• According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, about 1.3 million nonfatal violent crimes happen at work each year (2015–2019)
• 740 U.S. workers died from violent acts on the job in 2023. 458 of those were homicides.
• Deaths are the headline. Assaults are the everyday reality: about 105,800 workers a year went to the ER for workplace violence injuries (2015–2019).
• Most workers hurt badly enough to miss work from an assault are women. 

Here’s something I've seen over and over during my investigations into violent incidents. Violence is chaotic. It doesn’t follow a specific progression. And most attacks occur without warning with the kind of ferocity that leaves your employee incapacitated in just a few seconds. 

Employees who are trained to recognize safety threats before they turn violent, and who have been trained in a variety of strategies to avoid physical harm allowing them to match the best strategy for their specific safety threat, have the best chance to avoid physical harm when faced with violence.

Employees who work out in the field, or in other people’s homes or businesses face different safety threats beyond what those in the workplace face. As do employees who arrive or leave the workplace during off hours including those who start work in the early morning, or finish working later in the evening, in darkness.”

To be effective, the strategies to avoid physical harm they’re trained in must address those different safety hazards.

What are strategies to avoid physical harm?

Strategies to avoid physical harm are the actions an employee takes to keep from being physically hurt when someone becomes threatening or violent towards them.

They fall into different groups depending upon where they occur and the source of the violence. They include:

1. Situational awareness. The ability to read the environment around you including the people within it allowing you to recognize a safety threat before it becomes violent.
2. De-escalation. The ability to redirect a person’s thoughts away from launching an attack.
3. Communicating safety concerns to others at the workplace. Knowing in advance who to contact, and how to reach them for help allows employees to do so quickly and efficiently.
4. The buddy system. There’s safety in numbers. Potential attackers are less likely to launch an attack when there are multiple people. 
5. Parking lot safety strategies. According to the FBI parking lots are the third most common location for violent assaults including homicides. Reducing safety risks in workplace parking lots goes a long way towards keeping your people safe.
6. Changing the dynamics of an attack. This strategy involves actions that take away an attacker's initial advantage that occurs at the onset of a surprise attack.
7. Violent incident response teams. Assigning specific safety responsibilities to specific individuals coordinates the response, and helps eliminate inaction during an incident.
8. Simple self-defense strategies. There are workplace violence attacks, which leave no choice but to physically engage with the attacker, regardless of whether he’s a member of the community, an invitee, a co-worker, or a former intimate partner.

What strategies to avoid physical harm are the most effective?

The most effective strategies are the ones that minimize engagement with a potential attacker, and those that keep your employees safe during an actual attack. Here’s how I rank them:

1. Situational awareness. This is the most important strategy to avoid physical harm for both the workplace and for employees working in the field. Awareness doesn’t wait for the attacker to warn you. It’s reading the situation before anything starts. It’s the only strategy to avoid physical harm that can help your employees avoid an attack by identifying safety risks early enough to give your employees a chance to avoid that threat. Think of it this way, early warning = options = safety. 
2. De-escalation.  Although most attacks happen without warning so there’s no chance to de-escalate, the ability to get a potential attacker to shift his thinking away from launching an attack is especially useful when dealing with angry clients, patients, customers, and co-workers.
3. Changing the dynamics of an attack. Once an attack starts, the attacker’s goal is to incapacitate your employee as quickly as possible. Forcing an attacker to recalibrate during an attack creates the opportunity for your employee to exit safely.
4. Communicating a safety concern. The faster an employee can notify others of a safety threat, the faster help can get there to prevent or stop an attack, the safer your employees will be. 
5. Self-defense. Under California law your employees can act in self-defense, and in defense of others to protect themselves and others from the harms of physical violence.

I developed these skills through thirty years of working in dangerous locations, where I’d walk up unannounced to a stranger’s home in order to interview them. I did that thousands of times because in person cold calls are more effective at succeeding than trying to interview a witness by phone. 

But there are significant safety hazards in doing so. You don’t know if the person or a member of their household has a history of violence. You don’t know if there are weapons in the house, and you also have to navigate around other people within the community that can pose a safety threat too.

Three things decide which approaches are best for your employees.

It has to fit the job. A cashier working during a dinner shift at a restaurant needs different strategies to avoid physical harm than an office receptionist. That's why the law says "specific to the employees' jobs.”

It has to work for a given situation. Being able to de-escalate works when you have the chance to do so. Changing the dynamics of an attack, and self-defense, work best to avoid physical harm once violence begins.

It has to be practiced. Under stress, people panic and shut down. Checklists and slide decks don’t help processes to become automatic. Practicing them until they become automatic does.

The bottom line

California requires training in strategies to avoid physical harm, every year, tied to each employee's real job. Most small employers have either skipped it or checked the box with a generic video.

That's paper compliance. It won't protect your people, and it won't protect you when Cal/OSHA or a plaintiff's attorney asks what you actually did.

California requires that the strategies to avoid physical harm that you train your employees be effective. Want to make sure you’re meeting that requirement? I cover strategies to avoid physical harm extensively in my book “Is Your Workplace Actually Safe? which is in production. Sign up for early notice and I’ll alert you as soon as it’s available for purchase. 

Michael Corwin spent 30 years investigating violent incidents, and working in unsafe locations. He works with small California employers to keep their employees safer and to protect their business from the harms of workplace violence by complying with California’s workplace violence prevention law.