 You're watching FJTN, the Federal Judicial Television Network. But I don't remember you telling me when you were doing that. If you had, I would have asked... Why don't you have to go behind my back and put all this stuff down on paper? Ron, please try not to get angry. Nobody ever notices when you come in early or stay late or work over your lunch break! You don't need to close the door, Mr. Wilkes. What's on your mind? I'm gonna kill you. How about we start with that? Live from the Federal Judiciary's Tele-Training Studio in Washington, D.C., the Federal Judicial Center presents... Minimizing the Risk of Employee Violence. Hello, everyone. I'm Mark Maggia with the Federal Judicial Center. And as our announcer, Heather Austin-Jones, told you this is minimizing the risk of employee violence. I've got a lot of information to share with you over the next 90 minutes or so that we're together. One of the first things I want to talk about with you, and I'm gonna go around to our push-to-talk sites in a moment, I want to learn about your expectations. Why are you viewing today's topic in particular? It's not a topic that most people... Well, let me say this, that's a topic I would assume a lot of managers in particular would just assume not have to talk about, let alone plan for and maybe wish that it would just all go away. But again, we've learned from past history that indeed we do have to talk about this, at least to some length, and hopefully you'll have an opportunity to talk quite a bit today because I want you to get on those push-to-talk systems and get that dialogue going with me as well. Just a couple of quick notes. We have five push-to-talk sites. I think four currently are up with us and maybe the fifth will eventually join us. We've got a number of other view-only sites. One of the things we've decided to do is allow our view-only sites to fax in questions that they may have during the course of the broadcast. If, in fact, the spirit moves you and you decide to fax in, we'll do our best to address the questions while we're on the air. However, if time runs out or we just don't get the opportunity to do that, please don't hesitate to continue faxing in and I will make it a point to get back to you with answers to the questions that you submit. Also, because we just sort of added this faxing notion at the last minute, we didn't submit any fax forms to download. So find a form that you can use or a sheet of paper, but make sure when you do that that you put your name and your district down so that I can adequately credit whoever submits the questions. So again, for our view-only sites, if the spirit moves and you want to go ahead and fax some questions into us, please feel free to do so at the number that's on your screen now. Okay, as I said, I want to go around to our push-to-talk sites and I want to hear briefly. I want to ask you to give me about two expectations. What do you want to go away from this program with? As I said, I'm kind of curious. Not that I'm not delighted that you all are here, but like I said, it's a topic that a lot of people simply just wish they didn't have to address at the workplace, and unfortunately we do. So what I want to do is I want to go around, get a couple of expectations from each of our sites, and then I'm going to bring up the program agenda, and I'm going to look at the two, and I want to make sure that the expectations are married at least in some way, shape, or form to the agenda, and if not, that we make it a point to address your expectations before the end of today's program. So as a way of getting the ball rolling and getting people on push-to-talk, push-to-talking, let me start going to our sites, and I'm going to go over to the document camera and just briefly write down the expectations that you give me. So let me start off with Lexington, Kentucky, Grace Dupree, and or her representative. Are you there, and what are your expectations? Yes, we're here, and we were just discussing it, and I think probably our main expectation would be to hopefully find out the signs so we could identify when there was potential for it. How about if we call that signs of potentially violent behavior? Does that work for you? Yeah, our warning signs, something like that, that's fine. Okay. Grace, was that you? Yes, it is. Okay, great. Thank you. Was there any other one, or was that the primary one you were interested in? Probably the main thing that we thought would be covered, and I was kind of a little bit wondering what else would be covered, to be honest. Okay, and by the way, I've just noticed my penmanship on the document camera is horrendous, so bear with me. Okay, thank you, and let me jump over to San Diego and Bobby Ryan. Bobby, are you there, and what are your expectations? Hi, yes, we are here. We've just been discussing what our expectations are, and we'd like insight and or how to enhance our skills to assist in minimizing the risk of violent employees. We also have a second expectation, and I'm going to let Sharon Chapin talk to you about that one. One moment, please. Okay. The other expectation was, from a training perspective, what kinds of information or training can we provide our employees? Okay. Thank you. This is great so far, because we are going to address these, as you'll see in a few moments on the program agenda. Each one of these is addressed so far, so I'm feeling very pumped here, now bear with me. Let me go to Arizona. Do we have Arizona on with us yet? Okay, doesn't sound like they've joined us yet. Let me then go to Los Angeles and Bang Alfonso. Are you guys there? Yes, we're here. We get a couple of items we want to get out of this session. The first one, how do you handle a situation when an employee threatens another employee? Handling employee threats. Okay, let's call it just handling employee threats. And I assume you mean just verbal threats, Bang? Yes. Okay. We will talk about that to some extent. What was your other expectation? The other expectation is how to predict potential violent behaviors, what are the signs. And that should do it for us more. Great, thank you very much. The issue of warning signs, everybody wants to know. What are the flags? What are the red flags? What are the signals? What do we have in terms of advanced notice that we can potentially identify who might become violent? We're going to talk about that. Again, I'm still encouraged. We're right on target with the agenda. And let me go to El Paso and Robert Vales. Robert, are you with us? Good morning. Good morning. Well, good afternoon here. We're hoping to come away with some possible preventive measures here in El Paso. And so there's a lot of potential for violence. Thank you, Robert. The stress relievers is an interesting one. While we're talking about stress management in terms of a training possibility for your office, I want to, and let me offer this real quick, I think some of the issues we're going to address during today's program will go some distance to helping people gain some or feel as though they can gain some semblance of control over this type of situation. Because quite often, when people feel stressed about this particular topic, it's because they don't feel like they have the ability to control what may or may not happen at the workplace. So let's play with that a little bit, Robert. And let's make sure that I'm giving you, as we progress, that I'm giving you what it is, in fact, you're looking for. Okay? Can you live with that for the time, Ben? Yes. Great. Thank you. And let me quickly go back to Arizona. Arizona, are you with us yet? Okay. Let me now move from your expectations to our program agenda. And as I said, I think you'll find that most of what, or just about everything you've listed, we are going to address when we shape or form. First, we're looking at prevalence and types of instance employee violence. Folks, that's another way of saying, I'm going to give you some statistics. If you have your participant guides in front of you, then you already knew that in advance. I didn't want to put the word statistics up there because that may cause some people to take their 10-minute break early. Not that I'm giving you a 10-minute break, but I think it's important for us to understand what are the incidents and how frequent are these types of incidents being reported at the workplace. So I just wanted to hit you up with a few of those items up front. Next, we're going to be talking about agency hiring practices. Again, getting back to that issue, what can an agency do to help best control and prevent these types of behaviors from occurring? Well, if you look at the literature, if you listen to the people that are doing their research in this, what you're hearing is that one of the best places to begin doing this is in that pre-employment screening process. Don't bring them on, or if you can develop a process that helps identify these people, you don't bring them on to the job site in the first place. So we'll talk a little bit about that. Next, we've got discussion with policy development. Again, another way of attempting to control for these types of incidents in the workplace and giving people policy and subsequently training to that policy will, I think, you'll find go a long way in helping to exercise a fair amount of control over the workplace. And we'll have some suggestions in terms of what those policies may need to sound or look like. Next, we've got prevention. And there it is. It was under our expectations on preventive measures. Another word here I can incorporate is pre-incident education. We're going to talk about some employee behaviors that may be indicators of potentially violent behavior. And that's those warning signs that we mentioned. We're also going to include in this discussion issues of employee and supervisory training. So I have a number of topics that we'll offer that could be potential training topics to address this issue. And finally, we're going to talk about some do's and don'ts of dealing with aggressive employees. And I could change that slide to read do's and don'ts of dealing with aggressive individuals because we're going to talk in this arena also about the external threat to the workplace. Clearly, employees can present an internal threat, but you're going to see from some of the statistics that we're talking about. See, I even jumped on that word. I didn't want to use it. We're going to see from some of the statistics that we're going to use. I'll get it out yet. That there is a reported level of violent incidents that come from the internal component, the employees. But equally as important is to remember that external threat and even to the area that we talk about with domestic violence that can also spill over into the workplace. So I think you'll see from the program agenda that we just went over and from your expectations that we listed out that we're going to be hitting most of what you've talked about here. And again, I think, as I said to Robert earlier, the stress relievers will be something that I will make an argument for that most of what we're going to talk about can represent some stress relievers not only to the individual but to the agency in managing this problem. Okay, enough of that. Let me move on and we're going to now... What I want to do before we get into the statistics is I want to give you an incident to look at. And this is something that we're going to have up on the slide. We're going to read it together. Those of you that have the participant downloaded, you've got it in front of you. And what I want to do is I want you to just simply we're going to read it through, take a minute to think about it, absorb it a little bit, and then I'm going to go around to the sites and I'm going to ask you to give me some... give me some of your initial gut reactions to what you're reading. How does it make you feel? How would you... How are you responding to this story? And then I may ask a few more sites to tell me do you have any policy procedures currently in place to address this problem? Would you address it? Would you just sort of let it go? Let's see what happens. Let's bring the incident up and here we go. An employee reported that a coworker who had been hired as a supervisor six months earlier was in the habit of shouting and making demeaning remarks to the employees in the office. The supervisor was skilled in twisting words around and manipulating situations to his advantage. For example, you've got an employee who asked the supervisor for advice on a topic in his, the supervisor's area of expertise. The supervisor would tell them simply to use their own common sense. So in other words, they're not really getting a whole lot of direction here. When the person finished the assignment, however, the supervisor would then make demeaning remarks about the employee and speak loudly about how that employee had done their work the wrong way. So again, absorb the story just for a moment. We've got a supervisor who doesn't have the best of skills and tends to make the situation at the workplace rather disruptive and it even sounds like somewhat embarrassing for employees. Okay, let me go around to a couple of the sites and let me just get some initial, give me some initial gut reactions to the story. Robert and El Paso, initial reactions. Did I lose El Paso already? No, we're here. Okay. We're still absorbing. Okay. Any just initial reactions? I think that the supervisor would have somebody above him that we might be able to go to to help us out in our problem. But for the employee, we would feel nothing but humiliation and insulted and embarrassment. Sure. Sure. Good point. We're going to touch on that, the impact that people like this supervisor, because we're going to talk about the office bully. We're going to talk about the individual that comes in the office and intimidates others. Okay, these are the people that, you know, when they don't come to work, it's a good day for everybody else. And I'm sure some of you out there are smiling right now because you've worked alongside people like that. Good point, Robert, because here you're looking at a situation where the supervisor may not be the person you're actually concerned about committing violence, but the impact they may have on another employee, the employee that we don't know about, or that is a little quieter and all of a sudden, but inside is actually, you know, at a boiling point. Good point. How about, Bang, how about you guys in Los Angeles? Any initial reactions? We are a little bit concerned also about the other people who are from the external public who might witness such an incident and the kind of impression they're going to get out of it. Okay, so this type of individual certainly will have, his behavior will certainly have implications potentially to both be within and without the office. So good point, good point. Let me go to San Diego and Bobby Ryan and company and let me ask you, is there currently anything in your place of this situation we're occurring in your office? Is there currently any mechanism or procedures, policies in place to address this particular problem? If so, do you think you would address it? You know, and again, we're amongst friends, you can talk. In our discussion among ourselves, we had decided that the supervisor should be referred to the EAP program that we have in place. Additionally to that, we also felt that the employee who'd been humiliated probably should go for some counseling to help them build their self-esteem back up. Okay, two good points and I'm glad to hear you mention EAP. While I know a lot of folks do know what EAP is and what they do, I think I certainly have run into situations where I think equally, there's an equal number of people that don't really know about the employee assistance program and what services they provide. And so I'm very, very glad to hear you mention that right off the bat, Bobby, that sure, the supervisor sounds like it could very well be a candidate for EAP and depending on who the employee is and their makeup and personality and how they're responding to this sort of thing, may be an issue for them as well. Good point. And Lexington, Grace, anything to add to that one? Pressions where we'd work clear on whether this was a person that had been hired off the street, so to speak, or whether this was a person that had been a co-worker before and now had been hired as a supervisor because I was thinking perhaps this person is in over their head or their abilities and maybe that's why they're starting to shout all of a sudden. All right, let me, to sacrifice some of our time, I want to ask you about that. You're wondering about whether this person was hired off the street or whether it was an internal promotion. What would be some issues you would look at to say if they were internally promoted? Why would this make a difference for you? Well, it'd be interesting to wonder why they ever became a supervisor if this was their behavior before and if it was not their behavior before, then we felt like, as I said, maybe they're stressed by their new duties or something. Okay, your question begs a whole other broadcast in terms of if they were internal, why were they ever promoted? Why do we promote? Who do we promote and why? I certainly work for agencies where that question has been raised a number of times and sometimes I'm sure some of you out there can back this up is that some people in agencies get promoted because they've been problems and people think we'll promote them and get them out of the way or get them up and move them out somewhere else. I've seen it happen personally. I'm sure there's some others of you out there that have as well. Good responses. Hopefully that's got your juices flowing a little bit in terms of this topic. Let's now go to those prevalence and types, that statistical stuff that I mentioned to you earlier and let's just look at what the prevalence of the problem has been reported. Rebel threats pushing and shoving. You can see the gamut of types of incidents of workplace violence and if you note the bottom of the slide, these are figures from 1996 and 1999 from the Society for Human Resource Management workplace violence surveys. Rebel threats, 41% and somebody asked on their expectations handling employee threats. Clearly, the verbal issues are up there and the most prominent. Pushing and shoving, 19. Everything else down the list you can see are in the single digits. Now the good news looking at the bottom of the list is that shootings and stabbings are 1%. You're going to hear me say this time and again through the broadcast, I want people to understand the good news is most of us are not going to get killed at the workplace. The workplace still in that respect is a fairly safe place for us to be. Now we'll hit upon some of that information in terms of the homicides and everything later on, but I should have mentioned this up front and I'll mention it now. The focus of the issues and the information that I'm going to talk about today and that I want you getting back and talking to me about really are about workplace violence-related issues that are at a much lower level. We're not here to focus and sensationalize the homicidal rages that we've read about in newspapers and heard about on the evening news as horrible and tragic as those incidents are. What we have learned by studying these incidents and I can credit the Postal Service for the bad rap that they've gotten over the years, they have done a tremendous amount of work in their home base and examining the problem and we've learned that there's lots of signs and signals that were given out along the way and for one reason or another the agencies, organizations, didn't know how to address them, chose not to minimize them, blew them off, just didn't know anything about them sometimes and what we've learned is that when you address these things at a much lower level that that really does help to contribute to sort of keep these incidents at a minimum and really take care of the situation at a level where it's much more manageable. So handling employee threats I'm going to have some do's and don'ts and some other issues to talk about a little bit later to address that. But again the good news I think for us is that most of us will go home each and every night from our workplace safe from the threat of being killed at the workplace. That's again statistically bears it out time and time again. Continuing let's now look at why people commit or have offered reasons why they commit workplace violence and again looking at the top of the list of personality conflicts looking at 1996-1999 relationship problems, work-related stress all these items are in double digits but personality conflict and I know if I had a group of just managers sitting in front of me they would sit there and just shake their heads and say absolutely positively personnel in terms of management tend to be the place where we devote our greatest amount of resources and our greatest amount of energy people that just have difficulty for one reason or another getting along. I do want to highlight at the bottom of that list substance abuse. Certainly firings have been prominent in the literature where we've read about some of the homicidal rages that have occurred and often what we hear from the perpetrators of these incidents that do not end up getting killed is that it's not what was done to them but how it was done to them. Let me mention briefly and come back on camera for this the substance abuse issues you're going to see that issue surface a couple of other times during today's program and it is prominent and again when you read the literature when you read about the incidents that have occurred in many many instances you'll learn about substance abuse having played a role it's just there it's the reality of it and from a training standpoint one of the things that I always encourage folks when I teach workplace violence is if you've never done it you haven't done it in a long while get training on recognition of different drugs and stuff that have been out on the street and they're currently on the street get your local law enforcement involved have them come in and have them teach your folks for years I was in law enforcement and have been out of it for a while but for the time I was there I was pretty much up on that type of information now I would have to get the training as well just to know what the latest and greatest is but would your employees know if they walked into the restroom would they be able to recognize potential drug paraphernalia if somebody was careless and left it laying around would your supervisors and managers are they trained to recognize potential behaviors that might be associated with substance abuse related issues again a good topic for people to get training on so that you can recognize these and be more up to date in terms of what the latest and greatest is for this and again I would offer you send you to your local law enforcement the drug enforcement group of your law enforcement agency and see if they'd be willing to come in and provide some of that training to you I think it'd be worthwhile okay those are some of the motivations now let's look at the employee end of it and how workplace violence affects employees top of the list increased stress 43% and again one of the stress relievers was one of our expectations looking at the rest of this list you have increased fear decreased productivity decreased co-worker trust decreased morale and then increased absenteeism absenteeism turnover if you know and have studied anything about the physiology and psychology of stress folks you'll know that looking at that increased stress level at 43% that several of those items directly underneath of that fear, productivity, co-worker trust, morale they will all sort of correlate to that increased level of stress so once you jack up that stress level once you ratchet that stress level up okay there's all kinds of literature that will tell you how it can ultimately affect worker productivity absenteeism, morale, fear so again I was really glad to hear that you're interested in in terms of your expectations in terms of how to relieve some of that stress at the workplace and hopefully I hope you'll feel that as we go along with this information that some of this information will in fact represent some stress relievers for you I do want to talk briefly too the last two increased absenteeism and increased turnover at 9 and 8% now looking at the rest of the list they seem fairly inconsequential but let me again give you some food for thought as you sit there in your courts and for those of you in human resource and other managerial types of positions do you know what your current absenteeism absenteeism rate or turnover rate is and could your office sustain a 9 or 10, 8 or 9 or 10% increase over the next physical year in either of those areas and if you're sitting there saying really don't think we could again and I'm saying this just to give you a frame of reference for this and while like I said they look fairly low in relationship to the other issues there on that list apply it to your own personal situation at your office and say you know we couldn't absorb a 9% increase in absenteeism over what we're currently seeing and so as an effort to gain control when we talk about employee violence related issues we're going to talk about these things that agencies can do to try and minimize the potential for these things happening and to recognize the signs and warnings it's warning signals for this type of behavior and hopefully you won't have to worry about at least from this level about the current or turnover rate alright a few more stats for you during the 1990s the early averages of workplace violence include now these sort of substantiate some of what we've already read 1.48 million simple assaults 395,000 aggravated assaults 50,000 sexual assaults and look at the bottom bullet the thousand murders out of an approximate 121 million in the workforce and in terms of our chances of being killed at the workplace now again not to minimize those thousand that get killed because each and every one of them is a very very tragic and horrific incident for an agency to undergo but clearly again if you look at the numbers our chances of being verbally or physically assaulted at the workplace are far greater than actually worrying about somebody coming in with a 9mm or an Uzi so we can take comfort at least from the statistical standpoint in some of that information but again as I can emphasize from the final bullet with the numbers that are killed yearly at the workplace I've worked with a number of agencies that have experienced those types of incidents and I can tell you you don't ever want things to hopefully get to that level because coming back after something like that it's not possible but one thing I tell managers don't expect to be able to go back to the way things were before this incident occurred it's not going to happen you're going to have to pick up from where you are and move on and the good news is there you can do that but don't anticipate that you're going to try and go back to the way things were before that incident happened so again all the more reason to address these issues at a far lower level let's look at a few more pieces of information in 1998 the last year for which statistics were available 710 people were murdered at the work and fatalities actually dropped 19% in 1998 even as the overall labor force grew so again in terms of our fear of somebody coming in and laying waste to the workplace the statistics would bear out that for most of us the threat is very minimal but again not to minimize those who have lost their lives okay and again as I've said even though most people don't jump in when we talk about statistical information if there's anything that strikes your fans that you want to ask about please don't hesitate to jump in got a few more, one more thing on the facts question since Heather brought that back up remember viewer only cites if questions are coming to mind that you want to send us please don't hesitate to fax in the number that's on your screen now just a couple more items on average two million violent incidents occur in the workplace each year but only one fifth are generally caused by employees again a sizable number even though the one fifth sounds small but still again gives you some perspective on this in addition homicide is the leading cause of all the job death for women and the second leading cause of death for men however we've looked at those statistics and we know now that even though it is the leading cause of job and the second for men that we still run a low risk of death a couple more things workplace violence cost US businesses this is where managers can sort of start really getting interested in this an estimated 36 billion dollars annually folks that that does not represent the civil litigation issues associated with employee violence that simply is looking at things like decreasing or loss of work productivity increased absenteeism turnover rate things of that nature we're not into the civil litigation and speaking of civil litigation litigation usually focuses on negligent hiring or negligent retention of violent employees we're going to talk about hiring but again the issue of negligent hiring and negligent retention are there things that we can do to try and offset that at the beginning before we bring these people on board and we're going to talk about some things that you can proactively incorporate into your process okay we're ready to talk about our agency hiring practices and these are suggestions folks this is not policy this is not we're coming out saying do these do these do these we're just presenting these as ideas for you to consider about whether or not you want to incorporate this type of information into your hiring process again the literature sort of bears out that using this type of information may in fact help you weed out potentially violent employees so let's look at what we've got initially our pre-employment screening here's our overall recommendation before hiring an employee the agency should check with its servicing personnel office to determine what pre-employment screening techniques are appropriate for the position under consideration and are consistent with federal laws and regulations we've got to lay that out up front folks everybody and I've got human resource people watching and other managers that are involved actively in the pre-employment screening you are probably painfully aware of this so we wanted to offer that right up front as we begin our discussion on hiring practices okay let's now turn our attention to some specifics with applicant hiring and look at the applicant interview or I'm sorry the applicant review application review I'll get it down we will look at that application and before you even that applicant ever steps foot in the door before you ever meet them let's look at first impressions and is that application that they've submitted is it legible is it clear is it within the lines and again those of you who are actively involved in hiring people probably do this on a regular basis you'll know those applications speak volumes in terms of the way they're prepared and again what we're suggesting and what the literature would bear out is that sometimes you might be able to pick up on something about an employee with regards to issues associated with violent behavior simply by being able to start reviewing the application and paying close attention to it next does the application convey any sense of hostility or evasion now being able to pick up on hostility out of an application may be a little tricky but certainly evasion when you see areas of an application that are blank or aren't quite as clear as you would like to see them make note so that if you make a decision to invite this applicant in for an interview you're going to address these issues you're going to make sure that you ask the questions you need to ask and get the information you need to get is the application full of missing information data gaps or questionable addresses again before you've ever looked at this applicant this type of information that strikes you looking at the application you should be making note of it I mean you've got a missing date gaps, 1995 to 1997 no employment history you're going to make it a point to ask that individual if you invite them in what happened during this time period and when you start asking these types of questions you want to pay attention to not only what is said but how it's said do they seem to be evading the issue then do they just sort of well I just took a down period and traveled around Europe for about two years well that may be the truth and may not be a problem in trying to identify these types of behaviors or these types of issues with potential employees you're looking for patterns okay so that response in and of itself may mean nothing if everything else looks like it's in order and all the information is there and to your satisfaction but again looking for these patterns to start surfacing so again when you're interviewing these applicants and you're looking for these types of issues pay attention to what is said but also pay attention to how it's said that they can interview now okay let me come back real quick Heather if you don't mind I'm sorry we should jump to head on that what we're going to talk about now with the interview really gets into the issue of behavioral based questioning some of you out there may already be involved in doing behavioral based interviews with people and you know exactly what I'm talking about the examples we're going to bring up on the screen next are examples of questions that you can conceivably pose during an interview that will really force an applicant to sort of dig down into their memory banks and come up with real-life examples of situations that they had to manage based on what you ask them and let's look now at the questions thanks Heather for that describe a time when you have felt you were treated unfairly and what did you do about it okay again not a yes or no question clearly something that's going to cause an applicant to sit back and say no no the time I was treated unfairly okay and most of these people and let's face it a lot of people we get in front of us a fairly significant work history so I would think that they could come up with at least one example of a time where they thought they were treated unfairly I certainly could if I were asked the question in an interview and then the follow up what did you do about it you want to hear what they say what type of problem-solving process did they go through is there any emotion attached to their response you may be somebody sitting in front of you who all of a sudden gets all worked up and starts reliving the experience that they're telling you this tells you this was a pretty this was a pretty intensive end for that let's look at some more questions what did you why did you feel you had been treated unfairly a little follow up to our first point what could a supervisor do that would anger you and again gives them an opportunity to sort of if they don't have real life examples to give a hypothetical let's come up with something let's look at the next question describe a time when a supervisor made you really angry what did you do about it they may come back on that last question and say you know I've never had a supervisor really making me angry on a job but man I had a co-worker once who really got under my skin and okay then you say great we'll tell me about that and again you want to listen to how they relate the story you want to look at the nonverbals and verbals that they're giving you during that response sometimes and those of you that do this interviewing on a regular basis know what I mean when I say you listen not only to what is said but you also listen to what isn't said with these types of responses and always, always, always get the responses to your satisfaction they're there to give you information so get the responses if you decide to use these type of questions to sort of weed out the potential for any type of evidence of disruptive intimidating behavior on their part you want to make sure that you're hearing what you need to hear so again some examples of some hiring questions that you might think about incorporating during your interview process let's look at another list when it comes to the hiring practices Dr. Michael Mantell who wrote the book Ticking Bombs one of the books that I will plug during this broadcast that's very, very useful information talks about the critical five and they are work history military history criminal history credit history and driving record look at these just for a minute work history, military history, criminal history credit history and driving record the critical five he thinks you should be looking at all these minimally when you look to hire somebody work history, criminal history military history I would assume most folks will look at when they've got an applicant process going on and certainly anything criminal history I think we'd be very, very interested in but the credit history driving record may not be necessarily something that you are even from a time standpoint or staffing standpoint able to do but think about it depending on the job you're hiring someone for the credit history if you've got someone who has a history of poor financial management in their personal life is this an individual you are hiring who's going to you know have a government credit card they're going to be able to submit vouchers for reimbursement and again I'm not saying in and of itself that this is reason not to hire I'm just saying you know it's something you might want to consider so if you have the opportunity to just explore the credit history it may give you some information some additional data about a potential employee and again marrying it to that position you're bringing them in for the driving record I kind of like as a former cop why wouldn't I looking at somebody's driving record if you see a series of speeding tickets along the way maybe a DWI or in some states it's called DUI driving under the influence of driving while intoxicated again hey in terms of the speeding tickets maybe some of you sitting out there thinking I hope they never look at mine um it may mean nothing in the grand scheme of things remember I mentioned we're talking about this pattern of behavior so when you look at a potential applicant if you have the luxury of going into some of these areas the recommendation is you might want to just try and do it and see what else you can learn that might give you information and again always keeping in mind marrying it to the position that you're hiring the person for finding the information we're talking about with regards to hiring practice is helpful and maybe it's some stuff that you have already been aware of and I think in terms of employee violence always bears repeating let's look at one more recommendation that comes from Dr. Mantell when in doubt folks pre-employment when in doubt don't be choosy there always be more applicants available sometimes the the uh the group of applicants out there is smaller than we would like but almost always uh you'll find a group of applicants out there so be choosy consider each contact as an opportunity to obtain information those of you involved in hiring practices I know you've heard that one before and generally where there's smoke there may be fire so again be choosy and finally it's better to be safe as Dr. Mantell's recommendation here rather than be sorry later on I know some people have argued with me that hiring somebody in the even in the pre-employment you can still get sued you're not safe from litigation even in the pre-employment situation but I think it's still a safer arena in terms of exercising as much uh control over who comes into your agency by doing it the pre-employment screening level rather than you know not trusting your gut um not you know not not being better safe than sorry and hiring somebody and now that you've hired having your worst dreams realized and now you're challenged with managing this individual and or looking perhaps to dismiss them much more difficult after it gets to that level I think you'd agree so again in terms of the hiring practices some things to consider uh in terms of this whole arena of employee violence at the workplace let's move from our hiring practices and again please stop me if you've got questions or things you want to you want to raise Mark this is Grace in Lexington Grace go ahead I mean because they're listed here that there is some way for an employer to legally get their hands on those things but I'm I'm surprised that you could get your hands on things like criminal histories or credit records or arriving records um again I think it depends on you know your ability to do that certainly uh when I was and again well this sort of goes without saying I was in law enforcement we were able to do that pretty easily um from a from a legal standpoint I really can't come back to you with anything not being a lawyer in terms of what you might be able to do so go back to that first recommendation on the screen always consult with legal in terms of you know is this something we could look at and if so how could we get our hands on it um and see what you see what your legal legal folks in terms of what type of suggestions or your human resource people what type of suggestions they might give you these are just areas that we're offering as potential you know ideas to consider and if you want to choose to explore to see if you could get your hands on that that's the recommendation we're coming from but remember that first slide I put up with the hiring practices always consult you know with the legal folks in terms of uh finding out what you can do what you can do did I kind of skate that a little bit that's fine thanks okay alright Grace I appreciate that and again anybody else please jump in let's move from our discussion of hiring practices into policy development and again like everything else these are recommendations these are the things that we'll that I'm suggesting to you to consider if in fact you want to develop policies when it comes to dealing with employee violence a workplace violence policy statement should convey that all employees are responsible for maintaining a safe work environment let me come back quickly on screen for a minute Heather thank you um that bullet what I want to say about that is it's real important and I certainly have run into this when I've done this training around the country and other agencies where employees are very quick sometimes to point a finger and say we expect you to make our workplace safe the responsibility totally rests on your shoulders and what I'm here to tell folks across the board is nothing could be further from the truth it is everybody's responsibility to keep that workplace safe and employees need to understand that they contribute to whether a workplace is safe or not safe and a perfect example I can use this I won't name the court but I did some training a couple of years ago on this topic I was talking about leaving access doors open and un-open or keeping them locked and I had people tell me in one court that there is a specific door that they know about that is always supposed to stay locked and subsequently people that use it go out for smoke breaks or whatever they pry it open and prop it open and they don't close it after they leave and that is a potential problem so again first opened our building here in DC I used to listen to some of the complaints about people coming through the magnetometers and my perspective is hey everybody should go through those and it's one extra step in terms of ensuring that our workplace is safe and so again responsibility for everybody let's go back to that slide real quick and workplace policy statements should cover not only acts of violence but also harassment intimidation and other disruptive behavior it's real important folks that we talk about those lesser levels because that's where the problems tend to start focusing right there not just the overt acts of violence next we've got these policy statements should cover incidents involving co-workers and those involving individuals from the outside who commit violence against agency employees let me quickly come back there you go let me mention real quick about that external threat and I mentioned earlier in the broadcast about domestic violence here's another training topic folks and get your EAP people involved with this just some general information that can be shared about the nature of domestic violence domestic violence can and has spilled over into the workplace it is a very very sensitive a very touchy and for those who are direct victims very very embarrassing type of situation and many of these victims do everything they can to hide it at the workplace so it makes a very difficult and very touchy situation but making a mistake if a domestic violence incident occurs at the workplace it will not only directly impact the victim but several other of the employees who are going to be exposed to that as well so again another area where you might want to consider getting some training I've got a fax question comes from the district of Idaho and thank you very much boy you typed up the title and everything appreciate it if you refer the supervisor and or the employee to EAP but they do not go what can be done at that point well as I said I'm not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV but I know that recommendations can be made depending on the impact that employees behavior supervisor behaviors is having at the workplace and in terms of I certainly have known of situations where and again ducks are lined up in a row here managers are doing their checking with the people they need to check with and sometimes referrals to EAP can be made for conditions of continued employment you will get the two the EAP counselor you will go to these sessions otherwise we may have to discuss the feasibility of your continued employment here that again that's a pretty significant level in terms of getting to that point but I do know of situations where that has happened but in those instances supervisors managers that are initiating that type of action are in fact like I said consulting with legal consulting with human resources to make sure that they've got their ducks lined in a row before they make those types of leaps part of the reason why you see and this again folks in Idaho I'll offer this as another potential explanation and I think it may even have to do with people don't even understand what employee assistance is all about historically they started out as substance abuse treatment focus and they certainly have branched out considerably since then into conflict resolution and things of that nature so what I would encourage you to perhaps offset a potential problem or concern like this is to get your EAP people in if you haven't done this to get them to conduct training we have Brown Bagel, one hour session where they simply say hi here's who we are here's what we do here's how you can access us so again without trying to go out on a limb here and tell you well by God you take them by the arm and you arm twist them and walk them into the AP depending on the nature of the circumstances you may be able to make a stronger stance than simply making a recommendation but hopefully people can be adequately informed well as a supervisor you sit down and say you know here's what EAP can do and here's why I'm making the suggestion that you go and then lay that information out for people often times you'll find that giving them that kind of information will help to sort of reduce this concern now again Idaho I hope it is like I danced around that too much like I said I do know situations where managers who have that potential problem are able through the assistance of their human resource and legal folks to basically make it in a condition to continue to employment if the problem is that severe if there's that much concern to make the referral to EAP and see to it that they go so I hope that helps to some extent but thanks a lot for fixing the question okay let's go back to our discussion on workplace violence policy statements they should also say that the agency will respond appropriately to all reported incidents one of the operative words there folks is reported okay because there needs to be a mechanism in place that employees feel safe and perhaps it's an anonymous mechanism where they feel safe in making a report of a potential threat or incident that has concerned them and will respond appropriately again a little vague in terms of it's not real specific but it's important for agencies to respond when these reports are made and if you get your policies in place you'll have some avenues to pursue to know what's appropriate a lot of agencies are looking to the possibilities of putting what we call assessment teams together and that includes managers, supervisors human resource people security legal EAP people that come together as a threat assessment team and if there's an individual problem employee for whom there's some concern they'll sit down and do an assessment of the situation review the incident and determine which avenue depending on what you've got working here might this problem be appropriately addressed but the nice thing about it and people are finding very helpful is these threat assessment teams allows them to get input from a number of different resources that may be directly involved at one level or another with a potentially violent activity going back to the slide you should convey that the agency will stop will act to stop inappropriate behavior often times you hear about incidents that agencies have told employees well we're taking care of it we're taking care of it I know of one instance and we can come back and count real quick for this one I know of one incident several years ago in an agency in Baltimore where this particular individual was creating quite a problem at the workplace and it was a female doesn't match the typical profile that we see of these people and a number of complaints were made from several employees that this very intimidating and very threatening and managers kept saying don't worry we're handling it well what it turned out to be their way of handling it was they were biding their time until this person retired which was several years down the road my point to the organization was what type of damage did you incur what types of problems in morale or productivity occurred because that was allowed to fester for two years or three years when you knew there was an active problem going on again it's not always the individual bully or the intimidator that needs to be the focus but also what impact is he or she having on the rest of the workplace goes back to the issue of increased stress supervisors and all the offices involved in responding to incidents will be supported by upper management in their efforts to deal with violent and potentially violent behaviors in a nutshell for upper management once you put a policy in place please not simply give it lip service back it up let your supervisors and employees know that when they are making efforts and these incidents come to their attention at that level that as they're carried through that you will proactively look at these and examine explore and determine what needs to be done that's not to say that if an employee says somebody made a threat against me and I want them fired obviously you don't have to do that but clearly in order for these violent workplace violence policies to have some teeth the message needs to come through the upper management is serious about this and when we put the mechanism in place for reporting there will be some action taken but it will be action that will be taken based on what everybody involved deems appropriate ok some other things in policy development in terms of recommended approaches keep it brief and simple those of you who have written policy understand that keep your policy brief and simple consider the disadvantage of using definitions and I'll talk briefly about that in a minute next we've got be cautious with zero tolerance policy that phrase was a real catch all phrase particularly when sexual harassment policies started coming into and always always folks consult with legal counsel when you're developing policy let's talk real quickly about the disadvantages or some of the disadvantages of providing specific definitions in your policies and really one of the things that's pointed out and I will reference for this the office of personal management publication on dealing with violence in the workplace this was I think is still available at OPM's website if you want to dial it up www.opm.gov you should be able to weave your way through that website and find this publication for downloading a lot of helpful information very very well put together I can say that I was one of the contributing authors to the publication so I think it's of a high quality but again very very helpful and one of the things that's pointed out in terms of the problems getting back to policy and definitions is that definitions can discourage employees from reporting instance because they don't feel that the incident may fall within the parameters of that specific definition so again be mindful of using specific definitions in your policy in terms of the zero tolerance the issue of zero tolerance it may appear to eliminate any flexibility in terms of an agency's ability to respond to a reported incident so again just be careful and also one of the concerns highlighted about zero tolerance is that it may discourage employees from reporting because they don't want to get someone in trouble and when you talk about the topic of employee violence that is a real concern on the part of employees I don't want to ruin the person's career I don't want to get them in trouble with your training and education up front hopefully you can allay some of the concerns that people have about that and particularly if you've got a good policy in place and a good procedure for reporting you should be able to help set aside some of the concerns that people have about that but be aware when you incorporate this type of thing that's a very real concern employees don't want to get other coworkers in trouble and don't want to hurt their careers and that's a very real issue okay and on policy development so we've talked about hiring we've talked about policy okay we've given you some examples in terms of things that you can do recommendations you can consider now what I want to talk about is getting into back into some more of your expectations and the signs and signals the potential warning signs what do we need to look for and pay attention to these because these are not what I would characterize as profiles okay you're going to if you get involved in reading the literature you're going to hear about profiles of employees that have committed workplace violence for me profiles speak more to what has happened in the past than what is going to happen in the future and somebody mentioned on predicting warning signs on our expectations let me say this very quickly predicting who will become violent is a very very difficult thing to do even though we want to be able to do it mark tell me who it is tell me how I can identify him and we'll just pick him up and weed him out okay very difficult to predict so you want to look at some indicators we're calling a potentially violent behavior and here we go director veiled threats of harm folks when you hear this it's a real good warning sign and you really want to pay attention you got somebody letting loose with director any veiled threats and you get wind of it address it promptly because it tends to be a good indicator not predictor just an indicator intimidating belligerent harassing bullying or other inappropriate and aggressive behavior again shows a pattern okay if you've got somebody that does this and like I said before the individual is the individual who when they don't come to work everybody smiles with sigh of relief it's going to be a good day because they're not here these people cause a tremendous amount of harm and again let me emphasize something here when you're talking about the the intimidator the harasser the bullier at work you're concerned as an employer as a manager as a supervisor human resource manager you're concerned in terms of identifying the potentially violent employee you may be focusing on this boy in the office but that person may in fact not be the person that your real concern will lie with it will lie with that quiet individual who's sitting over there boiling because nobody in his or her perception is doing anything about this problem child at the workplace so again a suggestion is when you see these indicators while we say intimidating harassing behavior can be an indicator of potentially violent behavior and indeed it can be what I would encourage you to do is go beyond that point because you need to be mindful of the impact that these people have on other employees and maybe the one that you're not aware of who is in fact the real violent one next numerous conflicts with supervisors and other employees people that are involved in conflicts on a daily basis can give you a bit of a warning sign this may be an indicator again not a predictor an indicator bringing a weapon to the workplace here we go making inappropriate references to guns or fascination with weapons this is one I will tell you that frequently surfaces even in those profiles that I talked about in the literature clearly a red flag clearly a warning sign clearly somebody who has no business bringing a weapon to the workplace and ends up doing that or their conversation and you can tell it's a conversation that you will have with these individuals that you will be privy to that will simply make you uncomfortable to be in their presence you'll know the type of conversation we're talking about and again you want to pay attention to it other indicators statements showing a fascination with incidents of workplace violence these are the folks that will come in and say you know what that Mark Barton down in Atlanta that man had the right idea he took care of business and let me tell you something there's not enough people around here that are willing to do that you start hearing comments like that from someone and again little warning signs red flags should be going up there this is somebody who is you know sort of saying this sounds like a good idea again look for the pattern is this also someone who is displaying that fascination with weapons is this also someone going back to some of our others that has made a director veiled threat of harm to somebody so when you see several of these and number of these in and of themselves can be good indicators but again the pattern when you see several of these starting to come together you should be getting a picture let's go back statements indicating desperation over family, financial and other personal problems people who are desperate who are in desperate states of mind are unpredictable and again it's something to keep in mind if it comes to your attention EAP great resource statements about suicide let me come back on camera for this one folks that originally was part of bullet 2 I made the command decision to separate that from the second bullet and make that its own and here's why don't think for a minute somebody can't make a decision to commit suicide at the workplace suicide at the workplace I think is the single most disruptive act that anyone can commit in terms of just totally totally setting an agency and organization back and making it very very difficult to recover from and statements about suicide historically we used to think in the mental health field that when somebody talked about suicide that they weren't really serious about it we have learned that when they talk about it we pay attention and we pay attention big time there was an example several years ago that I was privy to when I was in law enforcement an officer came to me and said rode this officer in the other day to start our shift and he started talking about gee you know you ever have one of those days where you just feel like swallowing your gun and just you know ending it all and I said to this officer so what did you do did you go to a supervisor and he said oh no I didn't want to go to a supervisor because they didn't want to get him in trouble and I said you're too late he's already in trouble go to a supervisor and the most you can hope for is this person will hate you for a good long time okay when people make statements about suicide you need to pay attention so again I just wanted to mention that we could do a whole other broadcast on that topic and I'm not going to beat that point to death anymore let's go back to our slide drug and alcohol abuse I told you it was going to surface again and there it is always when you mix this and again in domestic violence issues I know those of you who have received training in that who have had other experiences you know that when you introduce drug and alcohol to a potentially violent individual or situation you ended up that situation a couple of more notches and made it much much more dangerous so always be aware of that or extreme changes in behavior there's another one you're going to see surface again okay the extreme changes in behavior can be warning signs can be a good warning sign to us this previously quiet withdrawn individual now is very verbose and acting somewhat agitated and in everybody's face boom warning signs and bells should be going off all over the place boy something's happening here okay in and of itself folks it may just be they may be having a bad time in their life or whatever I've encouraged others coworkers at this point to say if you feel comfortable go over to that individual and just say hey it looks like I mean there's a change in you how about we go out to lunch if you need somebody to talk to I'll be happy we'll spend some time going out to lunch the supervisors take note of this when you have those types of extreme behavior changes in individuals something's going on and you want to pay attention to it again hopefully you're getting the sense of addressing these at a lower level long before they get ratcheted up to the point where now you've got a seriously violent situation on your hands let's look at some other employee behaviors that are not quite as specific but nevertheless could be significant attention to employee behaviors where they act out angrily without trying to identify or solve a problem this is the individual who is if you're a supervisor sitting with them no matter what you try and do to walk them through a problem they want to hang on to this anger this anger now becomes almost like an identity with them and they can't seem to let go they can't move beyond it and again when you have somebody in that state of mind they tend to be somewhat unpredictable look at the woman in our opening vignettes if you can recall back that far you know who I'm talking about kind of saying they're yelling and screaming plus she was the only woman on our vignette so that should give you another clue when people are in that state of mind potentially unpredictable in terms of what they might do next maybe they're just blowing off steam and they're going to walk away and that's part of the problem with some of this in terms of identifying these warning signs these indicators is that oftentimes nothing happens and so organizations managers sit back and say you know that's just Sally they're like that they just need to blow off some steam remember what I've said you want to pay attention to the impact that those people have on others and number two don't get in the habit of dismissing them so quickly because maybe one time you'll dismiss them will be the time that you shouldn't have when people display that kind of behavior at the workplace you need to pay attention to it you need to take some action with it and again go back to our employee assistance program a great source of assistance for you and just consulting with a manager they can be very, very helpful going back to our slide making no connection, people that make no connection between actions and consequences well that's what I have to do and if those people react that way then what difference does it make or that's their problem no it's not these are people that don't understand the issue of perception that how you are perceived is people behave toward you based on how they perceive you and vice versa never considering the impact of their actions owner coworkers gets into what I just talked about a little bit drug and alcohol abuse gee where have we seen that before again McClure as in our other resource identifies that as a problem again get that training at your work site for people talking positively but acting negatively these are the people that will to your face tell you that yeah I'm with you I'm a team player this is good to go we're ready to roll and then they do everything in their behavior that speaks to the opposite and act very negatively these are things that you want to think about addressing folks not necessarily predictors they aren't predictors necessarily violent behavior remember the patterns I'm ranting and raving a lot here these are things they want to jump in on hopefully I'm giving you an opportunity to do that okay I'll take that as you're either all have left and I'm talking to the camera or that you're with me and just feverishly writing your notes down let's look at our next slide in terms of employee behaviors obsessively controlling and rigid okay and demonstrating extreme behavior that is out of character talked about that before before I get into employee training quickly about obsessively controlling and rigid and I'll give you a word picture for this how about a nice oak tree never watch a tree bend and sway in the breeze even the mighty oaks when you get a strong enough wind there's some give and take there folks these are the people that can go with the flow these are the people that can bend with circumstances those that are solidly rigid that don't bend at all when enough resistance hits when enough of that hits them boom the risk is that they will snap the risk is that they will snap okay that they will break so again use that word picture sort of in terms of that obsessively controlling and rigid individual getting back to our expectations let's talk now about employee training and supervisory training these are some topics that you can consider providing to your people in terms of addressing this problem employee training explanation of agencies workplace violence policy get the policy provide the training encouragement to report incidents teach people what the mechanism is reporting and get them to report ways of preventing or diffusing volatile situations or aggressive behavior good areas to get training in and many people can find local resources for some of these how to deal with hostile persons how about the next one managing anger anger management is a hot topic and I'm sure again going back to the employee assistance people could help provide identify some training in these particular areas for you let's look at there was one more there techniques and skills to resolve conflicts conflict resolution stress management relaxation techniques and wellness training I know courts have had those types of training in the past security procedures if you've got them in place people need to know what they are provide training in security then personal security measures going back to what we said earlier about employees must take responsibility for workplace safety that includes giving them training in personal security programs operating within the agency that can help employees resolve conflicts and again our friends at the EAP some areas of training for employees now let's look at some areas of training for supervisors performance counseling just because you're promoted to supervisor doesn't mean you know how to do it get some training in how to provide counseling and performance based behaviors addressing employee problems promptly teaching supervisors how to do that don't let things lag how to effectively use the probationary period constructive discipline was a topic that we did a lot in our face-to-face development training always a very popular topic training in handling crisis situations this is not a topic that most managers get training in training in basic emergency procedures what are the building emergency procedures how do we get out what are the resources, who do we call training in how to encourage employees again to report incidents and ensuring appropriate screening of pre-employment references that last one folks doing background investigations when I was a cop I'll share with you one little tidbit real quickly when I did background investigations one of the things I used to do when I found this list of references that you know are going to give stellar stellar reports on this applicant I'll call a reference and I'll say hey do you know somebody else who might have worked or socialized with this individual that I might be able to call somebody who's not on the list that you have in front of you and getting some of those what we might refer to as collateral references people that aren't that the individual didn't give us but who also might know them you can still make it stellar reports but hey at least you're digging a little bit deeper okay I know I'm running through some of this but our time is quickly moving along so there's our employee and supervisory training topics I hope they met some of the expectations that you had coming into this broadcast let's now look at some of the do's and don'ts of dealing with aggressive individuals and aggressive employees do project calmness if you've got an individual that's acting in an aggressive manner external threat internal threat the first thing you want to teach people how to do is project calmness if you're not calm okay you're going to just exacerbate the situation and you won't be able to think it through next lead with the behavior you want the aggressor to mimic goes back to projecting calmness you want somebody to calm down then you need to be calm you want somebody to work rationally you have to present a rational persona to them next be an empathetic listener can never underestimate the value of being a good listener and also folks a great training program for folks how to effectively listen and particularly dealing with violent employees focus your attention on the other person never ever sit there and give them that thousand yard stare allow yourself to drift off sorry you said what about what the minute you do that you've lost them and if they are aggressive if they are aggravated they are agitated you have just ratcheted up them about another notch or two okay maintain a relaxed yet attentive posture acknowledge the other person's feelings let them know that you are hearing what they are saying you'd be surprised with people who are under in crisis how effective that technique can be and it ties right in with being an empathetic listener do ask for small specific favors listen can we step over here would you mind sitting down I really would like to get to know more about what it is you're telling me see if you can get them to comply with you a little bit very small specific favors use numbers to switch an individual's thinking from emotional part of the brain to analytical real quick when they come back on and I want to talk about that momentarily just give me an example somebody who is very agitated they're in an emotional part of their brain they're not thinking rationally not thinking of that rational component of their brain by simply asking a question like well women now you've identified the problem or the person how many times has this happened can you name the days which days of the week last week did you say this happened and all of a sudden you're getting them to refocus hopefully some of what they've been doing coming back and saying well I know it was Monday I know it was Wednesday afternoon now all of a sudden you've got them and you can even start writing down as if you're really getting that detail you're causing them to begin to refocus that emotional mindset that they had to more analytical and once you start getting more into that analytical mode you're going to allow them the opportunity to start thinking more rationally and you'll see from the nonverbals that they will actually start beginning to calm down a little bit which is where you want them to go you let them think they're directing this whole interaction you're in fact the one that's calling the shots let's go back to some of the do's do provide clear choices to the aggressor this is not a time to get fancy folks this is not a time to get complicated if you give them choices make sure they're clear and understandable because these people are in crisis they're only going to understand so many words one of the rules of thumb is no more than five words five letters in a word no more than five words in a sentence when you're dealing with somebody who may be in a crisis next break big problems into smaller more manageable ones we sort of alluded to that briefly already next accept the criticism in a positive way don't take it personally they're going to be lashing out at you don't take it personally accept their criticism in a positive fashion repeat back any recommendations or requests that the employee is making to you you're clarifying for him which shows them that you're listening you're also making sure to yourself that you are in fact getting the information down accurately that's important orient your office for your personal safety I could spend another hour talking about how to do that and consider any cultural differences between you and the employee let me again mention this briefly a lot of you have a cultural diversity training in your courts the cultural differences it really does help to be aware of what the different cultural issues are not only within the office but in the constituency that you serve and so you might have a culture where a lot of eye contact could be perceived as very threatening very intimidating and here you've got an irate individual coming in and they come from this particular culture where that issue of eye contact is a problem and here you are thinking you're being the good government employee and you're looking right at them and the whole time you're doing it they're getting more and more upset and you can't figure out why you're saying all the right things you're doing all the right things I'm doing everything mad you told me to do what's wrong with us always good idea to get some additional training in that field as well that's one of the nice things about these do's and don'ts they identify other training issues look at a few of the don'ts don't use the style of communication that generates hostility again if you project calmness and you keep that mindset and folks this doesn't come naturally let me emphasize that this is not something that's innate you've got to work and practice this you've got to do what if crisis rehearsal training scenario based training develop training where people have an opportunity to deal with these draw from real life experiences don't reject all the person's claims from the start folks some of the claims these folks people have are legitimate don't minimize them you start doing that and you will absolutely lose them and again you will make a bad situation worse so don't reject them all up front listen to what they have to say no matter how crazy some of them may sound in terms of the claims that they're making there may be a hint of truth in some of what they're saying don't make promises you can't keep because if nothing else it makes it more difficult for the next person to ask to deal with them if they think you've lied to them don't take a challenging stance or posture and don't finally don't belittle the person these people feel that they need to get a voice and oftentimes if you give them that voice you will be amazed at how far that will go in minimizing the potential and that applies to employees as well as the general public a lot of times people need to feel that they have that voice and you give them that voice and you listen to them it will go a long way at defusing the situation before we get into our I've got another incident that I want you to read and I'm going to go around and ask you a few questions about I do want to come back just quickly and Robert I think it was you again with our stress relievers I think we've touched on most of the all of the expectations but let me ask you again going down to the issue of stress relievers do you feel that what we've discussed and the information I've provided thus far has played in or satisfied some of that expectation for you at least yes it has okay I will take that and run with it for the time being if there's anything else and again please these discussions don't have to stop here folks we can certainly continue them after the fact and I'm happy to talk to you on the phone about them particularly if I've had offices call me with a particular incident that you're trying to deal with and that be the case more than happy to sort of just talk confidentially to you about that alright let's look at one more incident I'm going to go around to the different sites and ask you a couple of questions about it so pay attention and we've got this we've got an employee who reported that a co-worker was picking on her she said that for several weeks this co-worker has been making statements like you actually took credit for my work and you're spreading rumors that I'm no good whenever I get credit for my work again that will be the last time you take credit for anybody's work I'll make sure of that she adds that her computer files have been altered and that when she reported this to her supervisor he tried to convince her that there was no real danger and that she was blowing things out of proportion absorb the story for a minute okay we have given you some listings of employee behaviors and indicators of potentially violent behavior what I want you to do is refer back to those items that I mentioned using the scenario that we just took take a moment and see if you can identify a few of those behaviors from that scenario and just come on out when I call on you and let me know which of the ones that you think are there let me go to San Diego and Bobby Ryan and company maybe one or two of the employee behaviors as indicators of potentially violent behavior that we talked about in relationship to this scenario actually we had only begun discussing it when we came up with the fact that the employee had used a verbal threat direct, not real veiled would you consider that a veiled threat or would you consider that a direct threat a direct threat okay and I ask that for a variety of reasons because some people interpret these things a little differently um thanks Bobby, I appreciate that how about Beng Alfonso in Los Angeles any other employee behaviors there that you might be concerned about as indicators of potentially violent behavior I think there is some intimidation that's present in this situation absolutely, good point yes indeed clearly some intimidation behavior going on there now let me pose the question what would you do about it knowing what you know now in terms of the information we've shared the stuff we've gone over what might you do about it and Grace any thoughts, reactions? I think that if she's actually gotten on to this employee's computer files and started altering them that there's probably actually criminal behavior at this point so I would take some fairly extreme measures like definitely going to the clerk about it or the marshals about it systems manager about it and I don't know, like I said I think this person is a pretty extremely a very potentially violent person there certainly seems to be cause for concern here and I would agree with you a good example where a threat assessment team might be coming into play here people will sit and talk about this incident and examine what are the options in terms of how to deal with this or I think some of what you say might be real cause for concern Robert how about any other thoughts in terms of how you might handle the situation? I think maybe we would try to remove the employee from the intimidating environment that she's in and we would also look into investigating whether or not those allegations are true probably warrants some looking into in terms of investigation and certainly examining the impact that this incident has had on the employee makes a lot of sense what I'm encouraged and what I'm hearing here is that it does appear that people would take some action with this type of behavior and again I'm encouraged by that quickly another real quick war story before we close out our day I was made aware of a situation in a work environment not court related where a young woman was physically assaulted by another co-worker to the point where their hands were around the throat they had had some verbal exchanges and it resorted elevated to that level when the incident was brought to the attention of the supervisor the supervisor's reaction was to minimize to the victim what had happened because the victim was seriously considering criminal charges against this individual which in my way of thinking in the state of Maryland you've got an assault battery there and that person would have been very very justified in pressing criminal charges and the supervisor tended to minimize oh I don't think we need to go to that level you know we want to we want to be educated about these we want to take these types of incidents under consideration and seriously appreciate what it is we are doing in terms of handling not only the potential perpetrator here the person we're concerned about but also our victims and the other employees that are directly exposed to these types of incidents folks on that we've covered an awful lot of information and I was rambling one probably a lot more than I needed to but I had a lot of information to cover and I hope that it addressed I think we did get to most all of your expectations and what we shape or form and so with that I thank you very very much for taking time out of your busy schedules to join us if there are other topics associated with this topic that you would like to see further training on give me a call certainly we can talk and see what the possibilities are but with that I thank you and please enjoy the rest of your day