Bulletproof practices: as frequent targets of workplace violence, two ways to stop a bullet. The safest is through preventive - Cover Story

HR Magazine, Nov, 2002 by Robert J. Grossman

It's been seven years since the fateful day when Janet Robinson, a housing specialist with the Richmond, Calif., Housing Authority, had lunch with receptionist Michael Pearson. Pearson, who had just been written up by his supervisor, said he felt like committing a mass murder, says Robinson, who laughed it off as a joke. He seemed to laugh, too, she recalls, and added, "I won't kill you, though." [paragraph] But over the weekend, the conversation weighed on Robinson's mind, so she reported it to her supervisors. They consulted with HR, and the decision was made to fire Pearson the next day. The plan, she says, was for a supervisor to deliver the bad news to Pearson, who then would be escorted from the building. [paragraph] But Pearson wasn't ushered out.

Instead, he was allowed to return to his desk. He then went into a restroom where he had stashed a gun, and began looking for people who, in his mind, had wronged him.

First to fall was supervisor Lorraine Talley, shot in the head. Robinson and co-worker Barbara Garcia heard the gunfire and tried to hide under a table, but Pearson cornered them. "He shot Barbara twice," Robinson says. "She died on top of me."

Robinson pleaded for her life. She says Pearson replied: "I told you I wouldn't shoot you." He left the room and minutes later surrendered to police.

"If I hadn't treated Michael with respect, even though he was sick, he would have killed me too," she says.

Robinson, who opted to become a schoolteacher rather than return to the housing authority, believes HR could have been better prepared to handle Pearson's dismissal that day in 1995. "HR made the decision to terminate him too quickly, and they didn't provide us with any protection," she says. "They should have handled it differently, maybe providing counseling. They should have made sure he was escorted out."

Seven years later, however, even with heightened workplace security concerns brought about by September 2001's catastrophic events still reasonably fresh in their minds, most employers remain unprepared to deal with violent episodes in the workplace. Employers are increasingly being sued for negligence and injuries resulting from workplace violence--and could pay $5 million to $6 million for settlements and verdicts, according to attorney Alan Kaminsky, partner at Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz, Edelman & Dicker in New York. However, he says, most organizations have yet to establish a program to help employees recognize potentially violent situations and prevent confrontations.

"Ten percent of companies have a program that you could sit on the stand and defend," says consultant Larry Chavez, a former crisis negotiator for the Sacramento Police Department and founder of Critical Incident Associates, a Rancho Murieta, Calif., company that trains managers in workplace violence prevention. Chavez estimates that 40 percent of companies have programs in name only, and that 50 percent have no programs at all.

Workplace-violence expert Corinne Peek-Asa, associate professor in the University of Iowa's Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, says companies with nominal programs have typically "hired a consultant who brought in a big book that included a detailed plan. But they never followed up. They sought to inoculate themselves with paper. It happens a lot."

Even employers that have suffered repeated incidents of workplace violence aren't taking adequate steps to prevent a recurrence, experts say. In a study of more than 500 small California businesses (including restaurants, grocery stores and motels), Peek-Asa found that most had minuscule protection programs in place--even if they had been robbed as many as three times in a year.

"Prevention is a low priority in most organizations," says William Frank, chairman of CareerLab, a consulting firm in Denver. "Corporations are reactive, focusing on the bottom line. They see prevention programs as window dressing."

Failure to act, however, can place employees in harm's way--especially front-line supervisors and HR professionals, who often are the targets of disgruntled employees.

HR is "the lightning rod for workplace violence," says Stephen Doherty, chief of police in Wakefield, Mass., site of the December 2000 fatal shooting at Edgewater Technology that claimed the lives of Cheryl Troy, senior vice president for HR and a member of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), and human relations specialist Craig Wood.

"Other than 'You're hired,' what good news does HR deliver?" says Doherty. "If you get promoted, your supervisor tells you, not HR. But if [employers] cut your expenses, recall the company car or fire you, it's always HR's job to deliver the bad news."

And, as Janet Robinson can attest, one unpleasant message may be all it takes to push a violent employee over the edge.

Everywhere, Every Day

Homicides in the workplace--677 last year--represent a relatively small share of the 18,000 to 20,000 homicides nationwide, says Eugene Rugala, supervisory special agent at the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime at Quantico, Va. But according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, each year about 1 million workers are victims of nonfatal workplace violence. "Most are simple assaults," says Rugala.