Business Owners Need to Be Safe From Violence Too. Here's How.

California requires business owners to train employees in workplace violence prevention. And that’s a good thing. Everyone deserves to return home safely, and not end up at the emergency room instead, at the end of the workday. 

And that’s beneficial for business owners too. The financial impact on a business’s bottom line from even a single incident of workplace violence can be devastating:

•  Lowered revenue.
•  Increased employee turnover rates.
•  Increased absenteeism rates. 
•  Decreased productivity.
•  Costly medical and legal bills.
•  Raised insurance premiums.
•  Can lead to a 5-figure fine from Cal/OSHA. 

Business Owners Are Targets 

But what about a business owner’s safety from workplace violence?

California’s law doesn’t require business owners to do the workplace violence prevention training that their employees do. In fact, the law is completely silent on business owner safety.

And that’s a shame.

Owners are the human face of their company. They are the brand. And people angry or unhappy with your company, for reasons real or imagined, can target you as the owner. 

In fact, threats, online and in person, to business owners and other executives are commonplace. And these attacks don’t just happen at the physical workplace. They can occur at a business owner’s home, and in public places too.

And it’s not just the public that provides a threat to a business owner’s safety. Employees and ex-employees can pose a safety threat to business owners. As can clients, customers, vendors, and contractors they work with too.

And then there's the risk of a violent attack from robbers and other community-based criminals too.  

That’s a lot of potential sources of violence for you to have to deal with.

As a Business Owner Who Keeps You Safe?

Law enforcement? Nope.

Their role is after-the-fact. Physical attacks happen quickly and often without warning. So unless a police officer is right there when you’re attacked, the attack will be finished, and you physically harmed,  long before police arrive on the scene.

Security video camera systems. Yet again. No.

While they can sometimes serve as a deterrent, unless cameras are actively monitored in a way that allows someone who can help to be alerted. Cameras like law enforcement, are most helpful after the fact too. 

After-the-fact is of little comfort at the time you’re being violently attacked. 

Although some business owners have the financial resources to have a corporate security team, or full-time bodyguards, most don’t. And that means that responsibility for your safety falls to YOU.  

And your safety matters. To yourself, your loved ones, and to your business.

I experienced this myself.

I worked in some pretty dangerous locations during the 30 years that I worked as an investigator preparing cases for attorneys. Often I worked in higher crime areas. And as a best practice, I typically didn’t call first before trying to interview witnesses. I just showed up, unannounced, at their front door. I knew very little about the witnesses, including whether they had a history of violence, what other people might be in the house, or if there were weapons inside their residence. 

To help my attorney clients maximize their case results, I had to learn how to keep myself safe in those unsafe environments. I developed real-world techniques to recognize and avoid potentially violent situations, and what to do to get out safely when violence occurred. And I worked on a lot of cases involving violence. Doing so gave me the opportunity to see how real-world violence occurs, and what can be done to prevent it, or when it can’t be prevented, what to do to keep safe when it occurs. 

I now share what I learned about violence and keeping safe from it with companies that want to implement an effective workplace prevention program, that not only complies with California’s requirements, but protects your employees from physical harm from violence, and protects your organization’s bottom line from the financial and operational harm caused by violence.

I also work, in an intensive format, with business owners ready to take control of their own safety immediately, who don't want to take years learning in order to be safe through traditional approaches. 

Violence is Chaotic and Non-Linear. Keeping Safe Requires Recognizing That

Keeping safe from workplace and community violence involves multiple elements. And that’s because violence is chaotic and non-linear. It does not follow a specific progression, so you have to be prepared for anything that comes your way. Here’s how you do that by:

•  Recognizing potential safety threats with enough advance warning so that you can avoid them completely, or be prepared to physically protect yourself if necessary.
•  Using your listening and verbal skills, as well as your body language, so that you can redirect an agitated person’s thoughts away from harming you.
•  Forcing an attacker to have to recalibrate so that you can take away his initial advantage that he relied on to launch an attack.
•  Communicating with others through code words and other methods so that you can develop safety through numbers.
•  Physically defending yourself from an attack, whether armed or unarmed, so that you can quickly and safely exit with as little risk of physical harm as possible.

If you’d like to learn more about effective workplace violence prevention programs and business owner safety intensives, schedule a free consultation  or send me an email at [email protected]