What Cal/OSHA Will Expect To See If There’s An Incident

You did your best to comply with California’s workplace violence prevention law.

You conducted assessments and implemented work practice changes to help your employees be safer. You created a complaint and investigation process that employees feel confident using to report their safety concerns. And you did all of the required trainings too.

But a workplace violence incident still happened. 

Look stuff happens. There is no certainty when it comes to preventing violence.

Your employees can be attacked by members of the public, people they provide services to, people from their personal lives, and even another employee.

And non-employees who come to your workplace can also be attacked. Sometimes by your own employee, but more likely by non-employees.

So what will help show Cal/OSHA that you were in compliance with the law?

In this piece we’ll discuss what Cal/OSHA will expect to see from you following an incident, and how you can limit your liability exposure, and other types of fallout from a workplace violence incident.

California’s workplace violence prevention law requires employers to do much more than have a prevention policy. Notifying employees about what behavior is prohibited in the workplace might cut it for sexual harassment, but it doesn’t meet California’s requirements for workplace violence prevention. 

Employers must now create, implement, and follow a roadmap designed to keep your employees safer from workplace violence.

You don’t need to be an expert on violence to comply with California law and to better protect your employees. But it can help to have someone by your side who knows about violence that can guide you through the multiple steps in the prevention process.

If you’re a California employer with 5–30 employees and want a quick sense of where you stand under the new rules, you can get a free 15‑minute compliance snapshot here.

Here’s what to expect from Cal/OSHA following an incident:

Violent Incident Log: Cal/OSHA will want to see your violent incident log. 

The log will help Cal/OSHA to assess the nature and severity of the incident, whether it could have been prevented, and to help identify any weaknesses in your prevention plan, and its implementation.

Your log should provide a detailed description of the incident, including its location and circumstances, the type of violence that occurred, and whether a weapon was used. 

It should also identify the source type for the violence, such as a member of the public, invitee (client, customer, patient, or vendor), employee or ex-employee, or a person personally connected to your employee from outside the workplace.

You’ll also need to include information on how you investigated the incident, and any disciplinary action that you took based upon the results of your investigation. And what steps you’ve taken to protect the employee victimized by the violence from further incidents.

Workplace Violence Prevention Plan: Cal/OSHA will also review your workplace violence prevention plan.

They will use your plan to see how you identified and assessed the violence safety hazards your employees face, and whether you anticipated the safety hazard that caused the incident, and if not, why not.  

Cal/OSHA will look at the steps you identified to remediate the safety hazards, whether you implemented those steps, and whether those steps were sufficient to address the safety hazard involved in the incident. 

They’ll examine whether you included employee input in the assessment and remediation process for safety hazards. And how you alert employees to safety concerns.

A key focus for Cal/OSHA isn’t just on the plan you created, but on your implementation of the plan. And whether your approach to implementation actually helps to prevent the specific safety risks your employees face.

Complaint and Investigation Documents: Cal/OSHA will want to review any complaint (if there was one) and the investigation process you used to investigate the incident. 

They’ll assess your complaint and investigation process for effectiveness and look at the results of the investigation conducted, the recommendations made based upon those results, and what disciplinary action and work process changes you took as a result of the investigation.

Cal/OSHA will want to see how your complaint and investigation processes addresses retaliation, and what steps were taken to get full participation during the investigation from employees and non-employee witnesses to the incident.

Training Records: Cal/OSHA will also review the workplace violence prevention trainings you conducted for your employees. 

They’ll want to know about the trainings provided to those involved in the incident. Who conducted the training, and whether you provided strategies for your employees to use to avoid physical harm, and whether those strategies were effective in reducing the harm from the attack. 

In the end, Cal/OSHA’s goal is to make sure that employers are complying with the law. And whether you developed and implemented a workplace violence prevention plan that works to keep your employees safer and not just on paper but in reality.

If you’re responsible for complying with California’s workplace violence prevention law, and you’d like to know if you’re on the right track, your fastest next step is to get your free, no obligation, 15‑Minute Compliance Snapshot.   

We’ll look at any gaps you have, and what you can do to close those gaps.