Content provided in partnership with

Long Island Legal Briefs: April 27, 2007

Long Island Business News, Apr 27, 2007 by Ross Daly

Violence seminar takes new meaning after Blacksburg

The seminar was long planned, but in the wake of the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech, it took on a heightened sense of timeliness.

One of the topics on attorney and speaker Matthew Halpern's agenda was disaster preparedness. Given that the April 19 seminar at the Melville Marriott was held just three days after the shootings, the subject of workplace violence naturally became a focus.

Incidents of workplace violence are all around us. On April 20, a gunman killed a hostage and himself at The Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Earlier this month, a man fired from a Troy, Mich., accounting firm returned and shot three people, killing one. In March, a man killed three people at a printing company in California before turning the gun on himself.

Most Popular Articles in Business: Research and Markets : Tesco Plc - SWOT Framework Analysis; Do Us a Flavor - Ben & Jerry's Issues a Call for Euphoric New Flavors; eBay made easy: ready to start an eBay business? These 5 simple steps will ...; Katrina's lawsuit surge: a legal battle to force insurers to pay for flood ...; Wal-Mart's newest distribution center opened last month near the southwest ...; More »

Given this record, it's imperative that employers have plans in place to deal with threats, said Halpern, a partner in the Melville office of Jackson Lewis LLP.

"There's nothing that has to be done that can't be done," Halpern said, calling it a simple matter of follow-through. So are managers aware of the need?

"You would think so, especially after 9/11," the attorney said, but humans - "fairly resilient as a species" - tend to move on to other important issues, "and plans to make plans may not be finished."

"Everyone has general awareness of the need for planning, but incidents like [Virginia Tech] remind us: finish the plan," he said.

Giving seminars like this one, presented jointly by Jackson Lewis and the Long Island Chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management, is often a matter of reminding people of fundamentals, Halpern said: Know how to contact employees. Back up documents and computer files. Have facilities in line if it becomes necessary to relocate.

Planning to deal with potential workplace violence can often prevent it. With the right training and knowledge of what signs to look for, human resources departments can intervene before problems escalate, Halpern said.

He recommends a holistic approach that begins with creating a workplace environment with a level of decency so people don't act out. This puts an added emphasis on preventing harassment or manager bullying.

Halpern points out that violent people rarely simply snap. Rather, their anger builds slowly and steadily - so anti-harassment programs go hand-in-hand with anti-violence efforts, he said.

"Employers have a legal imperative to prevent harassment, but they also have moral imperative - to keep people from violence," Halpern said.

But even companies with solid plans will occasionally need to fire employees, and in those cases it's important to have protocols not only for firing people, but also for dealing with them if they return to the workplace.

The first step, Halpern recommends, is to know if the person is extremely upset and has the characteristics of a violent person. He also suggests that employers get to know the local police and find out if they can make occasional patrols. It's also best if police are aware of potential threats in advance, Halpern said.

Further steps to take include hiring security and simple things like having secure entrances to the workplace.

Halpern said those who work in reception areas need to be aware of potentially violent ex-employees and know what actions they should take. Preprogramming emergency telephone numbers can help, as can working out a prearranged code. "Do you want the pizza with everything on it?" may be a better route to go than yelling out "He's here! Everyone hide!" Halpern said.

Halpern concedes that no one can anticipate every possible scenario, as evidenced by the shock that followed the events in Blacksburg. "It's not, 'Could we anticipate everything?'" he said, but "'did we behave reasonably under the circumstances?'"

And those circumstances change based on the facts of each case, he said.

Jackson Lewis is a national law firm representing management in workplace law and related litigation. Halpern is the head of the firm's affirmative action practice group. He graduated with honors from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1983 and received his law degree from the New England School of Law in 1986.

Long Island Legal Briefs: April 27, 2007

Long Island Business News, Apr 27, 2007 by Ross Daly

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Reference

Most Popular Articles in Business

Most Popular Publications in Business