Facility Professionals and Workplace Violence

America is reeling from a spate of recent workplace violence incidents that have rocked companies across the country. A few weeks ago, it was James Lee, known as the “Discovery Shooter,” who took Discovery Channel employees hostage after saying he was motivated to violence by the station’s tepid response to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” More recently, two workers are dead after a fellow employee at a Philadelphia Kraft plant stormed the plant with a gun after being suspended from her job.

The moral of the story is that it’s important for built environment professionals to do their part to ensure their buildings are safe and secure.

The IFMA Foundation’s free publication “Violence in the Workplace: The Role of the Facility Manager,” written by Wayne D. Veneklasen, Ph.D., CFM, and Donald J. Barnes, BA, is a good place to start. The report looks at the history of violence in the workplace, examines the scope of the problem, describes the statutes surrounding it and concludes with a focus on planning, response and recovery.

The report can be downloaded for free at http://www.ifmafoundation.org/documents/public/WorkplaceViolence.pdf.