Small Workplace Community: Violence Prevention

When we think of a happy workplace community, most would prefer not to think about the realities of psychological injury outside of skipping it on their screens, news and social media feeds during doom scrolling time. 

Psychological injury can, and does, occur.

In Canada, we have Workplace Violence legislation that is meant to prevent injury in the workplace. The Regulations that outline psychological injury prevention are within Part XIX Hazard Prevention Program of the Canada Occupational Health and Safety Regulations. 

Types of workplace violence that can happen in the workplace community include physical and psychological violence and often occur as a direct result of workplace employment.  Sources of violence in the workplace community can include clients, coworkers, management, domestic violence, financial exploitation and darker mental health driven risks which we all face in this present world.  Workplace injury and their consequences are a fact of life and as with both time and chance and circumstance, those incidents have the potential to happen to us all. 

Like disease, workplace violence does not know fairness nor reasonableness. 

Workplace violence is particularly damaging as it strikes at the heart of personal survival and provision for self and family.  Persons experiencing workplace violence often stay in employment situations to preserve their financial stability and simply hope things will change.  Unless the workplace community has an established practice to deal with workplace violence situations that is both firm and fair, people may suffer in silence and develop psychological injury wherein they can no longer perform the duties of their job.  In Alberta, we are grateful to have a Worker’s Compensation Board to help injured workers but the reality of the situation is that the psychologically injured worker will often never reach pre injury levels of life functioning.  Psychological injury is often permanent.

For some areas of work where violence is inherent to the job, Moral Injury and/ or PTSD can develop early and affect the workers functioning levels for not only the span of their career but as well for the remainder of their life.  Quite costly for the company or organization, the insurance and liability costs do not return the worker to the pre injury state of being and they are forever changed due to psychological injury.  Unable to participate in their life as they did pre injury and with families and friends not sure how to respond to the psychological injury, the injured workers’ lives are often functionally ruined and families can shatter. Alienation, separation and divorce rates can be high, and parental disruptions, frequent.  In combination with the psychological injury from the workplace, the increased poor mental health due to the social isolation that accompanies the harsh reality of not being able to work can result in different types of negative coping responses including addiction, intoxicant abuse as well as social isolation, self-harm and suicide.  

In the face of such daunting consequences, it can be tempting to not act in the face of unanswered questions:

Can the workplace community prevent on the job psychological injury? 

Can the workplace community protect itself and create practices that promote prevention of psychological injury before it happens? 

After it happens?  Help when it’s happening?

QC Wayfinding: Partnering with Clients

The answer to these questions is yes! 

Psychological Health and Safety practices can be developed and customized for your workplace community and easily blended with your existing Occupational Health and Safety policy and practice.  From paper to practical onsite training and awareness education, QC Quintessence Consultation can help build resilience in individuals, strengthen “between” interpersonal communication and align workplace community Psychological Health and Safety practice to National Standards for Psychological Health and Safety through prevention based practice.

Remember the old adage – an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Take the next steps to protect your workplace community from violence and contact us for a consultation at QuintessenceConsultation@gmail.com