How to create a better office environment with furniture, supplies, and products

As noted in my previous post, What Can the Juanita Bynum Assault Teach Office Workers I’ll be offering some tips for workplace violence. However, what I realized is that even for office workers there are different levels of workplace violence protection necessary. There’s what to do at a supervisory level, how to plan for violence, what to do if you feel angry, and also how to handle an angry co-worker.

Thus I’ll be doing a special this week and offering workplace violence prevention tips throughout many posts.

Something about me you may not know is I’m certified through OSHA on tons of safety topics and am sort of a safety addict. I’ve served on many a safety committee and worked with high risk individuals as well so I know how important violence prevention is. Seriously, I've been attacked with an electric weed whacker, lived through a bomb threat and was kicked so hard in my calf I couldn't walk -- those are my calm stories (you see why I work at home now). Work is dangerous! 

However, not everyone likes workplace safety as much as me so I’ll mix it up with some other office minded posts this week as well. But it is a very important topic so I hope you stick around throughout the week.  

The problem with a violent individual is you can’t put it all on them.

Unfortunately your response to a pre-crisis or current crisis has the ability to escalate or de-escalate a situation. If someone hurts you at your workplace I am in NO WAY saying that you are to blame – but what I am saying is that sometimes your response may help. It’s always good to try. In the next post I’ll discuss ways to ward off violence but for now let’s talk about something even more important…

When you should you not try to de-escalate an individual.

• If a co-worker is already so angry or agitated that they have actually started to hurt you or another person at the workplace.
• If a co-worker is harming property in a violent manner.
• If a co-worker is harming themselves.
• If the impending violence is on the cusp of another emergency; say, a fire. You might think this sounds ridiculous but emergencies can bring out all the worst in people.

If any of the above is occurring it’s not time to nicely de-escalate.

It’s time to get yourself and anyone else with you the heck out of dodge. You know why you rarely hear about workplace heroes on the news? Because it doesn’t happen; that’s TV movie material and it’s rare you’re going to encounter it in the real live office setting. Once dangerous violence in the workplace starts; rational is rarely going to stop it.

Smart workers don’t play the hero they get out of harms way. Get to a safe place and call the police or building security (if you have some).

Next up: how you can be more in charge of a potentially dangerous workplace violence situation.

What kind of workplace violence have you encountered?