Workplace violence can occur anywhere: schools, office buildings, hospitals, or late-night convenience stores. It can occur day or night, inside or outside of the workplace, and it can include threats, harassment, bullying, stalking, verbal abuse, and intimidation. Left unchecked, workplace violence can lead to physical assaults and homicide. This handbook tackles this often overlooked but pervasive problem and provides a comprehensive five-step process for understanding and preventing it.

Eliminating workplace violence requires the day-to-day involvement of managers, supervisors, human resources, employees, security and law enforcement, and facilities management. It also requires understanding potential problems and preparing to overcome them. This handbook, a co-publication with Government Horizons, looks at the nature of workplace violence and addresses the questions all workplaces face:

Who you need to protectWhat you are protecting them fromHow vulnerable your employees areWhere the threats might come from\What you can do to prevent violence from occurringHow to deal with workplace violence should it occur

You will examine the authors'' five steps to preventing workplace violence: Understand, Detect, Defuse and Protect, Assess and Contain, and Prevent-in detail. The authors introduce and outline each step and provide comprehensive guidance through acronyms, quizzes, and summary charts. They examine the extent of a problem; look at some of the myths surrounding it; and provide early warning and detection signs, best prevention polices, and proven defusing, protection, and containment techniques and strategies that you can implement in your own environment.

Each section ends with case studies, scenarios, worksheets, and checklists to further clarify the steps needed to plan, develop, and execute an effective workplace violence prevention program. An extensive appendix and list of additional resources are also included.