Workplace Violence Prevention: A Guide for Employers

Workplace violence is the third leading cause of occupational fatalities in the United States. It affects workers in every industry. The risks are not limited to industries typically associated with danger. Healthcare workers, retail employees, teachers, and office staff all face elevated risks. The level of risk depends on the nature of their work and the populations they serve.

Employers have both legal and moral obligations to address workplace violence risk. Understanding those obligations and the practical steps to meet them is the starting point for any prevention program.

What Counts as Workplace Violence

Workplace violence covers a range of threatening and harmful behaviors, not just physical assault. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) defines it as any act or threat of physical violence, harassment, intimidation, or other threatening disruptive behavior that occurs at the work site.

OSHA identifies four types of workplace violence:

Type 1: Criminal intent. The perpetrator has no legitimate relationship with the business. Robbery and shoplifting that escalate to violence fall here.

Type 2: Customer or client. The perpetrator is a customer, client, patient, or other person the employee serves. This is the most common category in healthcare, social services, and retail.

Type 3: Worker on worker. The perpetrator is a current or former employee. This includes bullying, harassment, and assault between coworkers.

Type 4: Personal relationship. The perpetrator has a personal relationship with an employee, such as a domestic partner. Domestic violence that follows an employee to the workplace falls in this category.

Legal Requirements

OSHA's General Duty Clause requires employers to provide a workplace free from recognized hazards likely to cause death or serious physical harm. Courts and OSHA have interpreted this to include workplace violence hazards. California has gone further. Senate Bill 553, which took effect in 2024, requires most California employers to put a formal written workplace violence prevention plan in place.

Even in states without California-level specificity, employers who fail to address known risks face OSHA citations, workers' compensation exposure, and civil liability.

Building a Workplace Violence Prevention Program

An effective prevention program includes several connected components.

Hazard assessment. Identify the specific risk factors in your workplace:

• the nature of the work
• the populations you serve
• the physical layout of the facility
• existing security controls
• any history of incidents

Risk factors vary significantly by industry and site.

Written prevention plan. Document the program, the policies, the procedures, and the responsibilities. California requires this formally. Best practice everywhere is to have it in writing.

Reporting and response procedures. Set clear processes for employees to report threatening behavior or incidents. Set equally clear processes for how the organization will respond. Fear of retaliation significantly suppresses reporting, and the plan must address this directly.

Training. All employees should understand the prevention program, the warning signs of escalating behavior, and how to report concerns. Employees in higher-risk roles, including those who work directly with the public or in isolated environments, need role-specific training.

Post-incident procedures. What happens after an incident matters for the well-being of affected employees and for the organization's ability to prevent future incidents. Post-incident support, investigation, and review processes should be set up in advance.

Behavioral Warning Signs

Research consistently identifies behavioral patterns that precede workplace violence incidents. No single indicator is diagnostic, but patterns of behavior warrant serious attention.

Watch for the following signs:

• escalating personal conflicts with coworkers or supervisors
• direct or indirect threats
• evidence of personal crisis, such as recent significant losses, financial distress, or relationship disruption
• expressions of grievance or perceived injustice by the organization
• increased interest in weapons or workplace violence incidents
• significant changes in behavior, attendance, or performance without apparent explanation

Organizations should set up a threat assessment process to evaluate these indicators when they arise. The process should involve HR, legal counsel, security, and management as appropriate.

Building a Threat Assessment Team

A threat assessment team is the operational mechanism that turns policy into practice. When an employee reports concerning behavior, or when a manager notices a pattern of warning signs, a defined group must be ready to receive the information, evaluate it, and decide on a response. Without a standing team, concerns get routed ad hoc, information gets siloed, and decisions get delayed at the moments when speed matters most.

The team typically includes representatives from human resources, legal counsel, security or facilities, and senior management. Additional input may come from mental health professionals, local law enforcement liaisons, and outside investigators when the situation warrants. Members should meet regularly even when no active case exists. These meetings let them review lower-level concerns and keep the team's processes sharp. When a high-concern case arises, the team needs to be able to convene within hours, not days.

Threat assessment is a discipline, not an intuition. Teams should use a structured evaluation framework that considers:

• the nature and specificity of any threat
• the subject's access to weapons
• the subject's history of violence
• any stabilizing or destabilizing factors in the subject's life
• the target's vulnerability

Encyphir's security consulting practice helps organizations stand up threat assessment teams, trains members in structured professional judgment, and provides on-call support when a case exceeds internal capability.

Pre-Employment Screening and Personnel Decisions

Prevention begins before hiring. A significant share of Type 3 incidents involve employees with histories that thorough pre-employment screening would have surfaced. These histories include patterns of prior workplace conflict, criminal history relevant to the role, misrepresentations on applications, or verifiable indicators of instability. Employers who rely on instant online database checks or cursory reference calls often miss these signals.

Comprehensive background investigations go beyond automated database pulls. They include:

• verification of employment and education history
• court record searches in jurisdictions where the subject has lived
• interviews with former supervisors and colleagues when appropriate
• open-source intelligence work for sensitive roles, which may reveal concerning affiliations or communications

For executive-level hires and positions involving access to vulnerable populations, money, or trade secrets, this level of scrutiny is not optional. It is basic due diligence.

Personnel decisions during employment also carry violence-prevention implications. Terminations, demotions, denied promotions, and disciplinary actions are among the most common triggers for Type 3 incidents. Organizations should plan difficult personnel actions with the threat assessment lens engaged. Who will be present? Where will the conversation occur? What access does the affected employee have to workplace systems and facilities, and how will that access be managed after the conversation? When the subject has shown warning signs, a pre-termination threat assessment and a coordinated security plan are warranted.

Domestic Violence and the Workplace

Type 4 incidents, where the perpetrator has a personal relationship with an employee, are often overlooked in prevention planning. Domestic violence does not stay at home. Abusers call, show up at the workplace, surveil parking lots, and use workplace communication channels to intimidate their targets. In the most severe cases, the workplace becomes the site of lethal violence because the victim's schedule is predictable there in a way it may not be elsewhere.

Effective prevention requires a domestic violence component in the broader program. Supervisors should be trained to recognize signs that an employee may be affected:

• unexplained injuries
• sudden performance changes
• an ex-partner or current partner who repeatedly appears at the workplace
• expressed fear for personal safety

Policies should permit schedule changes, workstation relocations, and, where appropriate, coordination with the employee on orders of protection that include the workplace.

When an employee reports a domestic violence concern, the organization may need investigative support to document behavior, evaluate the threat, or locate a subject whose whereabouts have become uncertain. Encyphir's surveillance and missing persons teams support law firms and corporate clients on these matters. We always work in coordination with the affected employee's stated wishes and with applicable legal process.

Physical Security and Emergency Response

Prevention programs rely on physical security measures that match the assessed risk. Access control, visitor management, alarm systems, duress notification tools for isolated workers, parking lot lighting, and sight lines at reception desks all shape the environment in which violence may or may not occur. A facility security assessment identifies gaps between the current physical environment and the risks the organization has actually identified.

Emergency response planning is the other half of the equation. When a violent incident begins, employees need to know, without deliberation, whether to run, hide, or fight. They also need to know how to communicate with responders, how to account for coworkers, and how to secure the scene once the immediate threat has passed. Tabletop exercises and drills, conducted at least annually, convert written procedures into practiced behavior. Our training programs include active-threat response training tailored to the site, the industry, and the specific populations the employer serves.

Industry-Specific Considerations

Healthcare employers face the highest rates of Type 2 violence in the economy. Emergency departments, behavioral health units, long-term care facilities, and home-health environments each present distinct exposures. Retail and hospitality employers contend with late-night operations, cash handling, and isolated worker scenarios. Education employers must balance open campus cultures with the reality that schools and universities can be targets. Disputes among students, staff, and outside parties can escalate in ways that require coordinated response. School districts and independent schools often engage outside investigators for matters that cross jurisdictional lines or involve sensitive populations. That is one reason we maintain dedicated resources for schools and for corporate clients with multi-site operations.

Law firms occupy a unique position in this ecosystem. They advise employer clients on compliance and litigation exposure, and they also have their own workplace violence risks. Family law, criminal defense, and employment practice areas often involve clients and opposing parties in crisis. Firms that partner with a licensed investigations provider can offer clients a coordinated response that integrates legal strategy with investigative and protective work.

Whatever the industry, the underlying principle is the same. Workplace violence is not random, and it is rarely unforeseeable. It follows patterns that trained observers can recognize, and it responds to prevention efforts that are thoughtfully designed and consistently executed. Organizations that treat prevention as a continuous discipline rather than a compliance checkbox significantly reduce their risk. More importantly, they protect the people who rely on them for a safe place to work.

Our training team helps employers build workplace violence prevention programs, trains employees and managers, and provides California SB 553 compliance support. Corporate clients pair training with security consulting to set up threat assessment teams, facility reviews, and emergency action plans, so the program has real response capability behind it. Contact us to discuss your organization's needs.