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 By Patrick
Glynn
9/2004
It was the day after Christmas, an unusually quiet day at Edgewater
Technology, an up-and-coming Internet consulting firm in Wakefield,
Massachusetts. Many of the company’s 240 employees taken the day off to
spend time at home with their families. Janice Hagerty, the firm’s
49-year-old office manager, had driven in that morning from her home in
nearby Stoneham as a favor, to spend the day covering for the firm’s
vacationing receptionist.
Just after 11 a.m. Michael McDermott, 42, a burly software tester hired
nine months earlier, entered the reception area and began a shooting
spree. After working his way from office to office, gunning down men
and women, he returned to the reception area, calmly awaiting the
arrival of police. All seven of his victims were dead.
McDermott’s grievance? Two weeks earlier Edgewater informed him that the
IRS was garnering his wages, leaving him with just $250-275 in take-home
pay every two weeks. McDermott had argued bitterly with managers in
human resources about the garnishment. Otherwise fellow workers
remembered him as a quirky but not particularly menacing employee.
Violence in the workplace remains a disturbingly common phenomenon. The
Bureau of Labor Statistics reported over 600 workplace homicides in
2001, or more than a dozen per week. To be sure, the majority of
workplace violence victims work in high-risk professions or locations.
Police officers, taxi drivers, and late-night convenience store clerks
rank high on the list. But every year there are dozens of killings
involving disgruntled or recently fired employees—or abusive spouses or
ex-boyfriends stalking their victims at work. And when one adds to the
homicides the number of workplace assaults or violent threats,
government estimates of total violent workplace incidents approach 2
million per year.
What can a company do to curb violence in the workplace—and above all to
prevent an Edgewater Technology incident? Where can managers get the
guidance they need to spot potential offenders before they unleash their
rage?
Experts agree that most companies today are poorly equipped to deal with
the problem. According to a 2003 survey by the Society of Human
Resource Management, fewer than half the firms responding currently
brief employees on a workplace violence policy or train managers to
handle such incidents. Also, most companies have no clear policy
regarding the conduct of layoffs or terminations—often a triggering
event that can send a potentially violent employee over the edge.
One price of lacking clear policies is ambiguity for managers. “If you
were to ask any first-line supervisor in an organization, ‘What do you
do when you see an incident of sexual harassment occurring?’ they’ll
know exactly what to do because it’s part of their training,” says Larry
Chavez, a workplace violence consultant in Sacramento, California.
“Workplace violence is not.”
What would you do if an employee came to you with a complaint that
another employee had threatened him or her with physical harm? For
example, do you have a responsibility to inform all employees of the
incident? If you choose not to make the threat known and attempt to
settle the issue quietly, can you and your company be held liable for
putting the entire employment force at risk? The absence of a clear
policy forces front-line managers to sort out such tricky dilemmas.
The key to an effective workplace violence policy is clarity. Intel
Corporation has adopted what many regard as a model policy. The
cornerstone of the Intel approach—and of most such policies today—is “no
tolerance.” Under Intel’s policy, an employee who “makes a threat of
serious harm, exhibits threatening behavior, or engages in violent acts”
is immediately removed from the premises. In addition, every employee
is held responsible to immediately report any knowledge of such
behavior.
The advantages of providing such guidance are clear. Employees are made
aware from the moment of orientation of the line between acceptable and
unacceptable workplace behavior. Also, managers are relieved of the
burden of figuring out from scratch how to respond to incidents when
they occur.
A workplace violence policy has other major benefits. “When you break
down past incidents, you’ll find that in most cases, with an effective
plan in place, you could have mitigated the violence,” says Intel’s Tom
Garcia. In addition, the existence of such a policy can save a company
millions in legal damages should an incident occur. Finally, such a
policy can have a positive spillover effect, improving the climate and
morale of the workplace as a whole.
Of course, removing the offending employee from the premises is only
part of the solution. The Intel plan incorporates training for managers
on evaluating and reporting such incidents. It establishes response
teams, involving personnel from both human resources and corporate
security, who move in the moment an incident occurs, ensuring that the
employee is safely removed from the premises and locked out. (Having
good basic site security—where access by both employees and outsiders is
tightly controlled—is one indispensable element of any safe office.)
Intel also has in place a complete crisis plan for the post-incident
phase, involving both public relations for the company and counseling
for affected employees. The plan works in conjunction with the
company’s Employee Assistance Program, which, depending on the nature of
the incident and the issues, can provide counseling to the offending
worker.
Not every company, of course, can bring Intel’s vast resources to bear
on such a problem. But the mere establishment of a policy that makes
verbal threats of violence, or certainly physical assault in any form,
clear grounds for discipline can enhance the authority of a manager
forced to cope with such an incident.
Experts add that even in the absence of a formal policy, efforts to
improve the general tone of the workplace can have a positive effect.
Many experts agree that handling exchanges with employees—including
conflict—with civility and tact provides a buffer against violent
behavior. Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox points
out that many employees can fit the profile of the potentially violent
worker—angry, frustrated individuals, with few friends, and abiding
sense of grievance. Very few such individuals will ultimately explode.
“Rather than trying to identify these killers,” says Fox, “we should
humanize the entire workplace . . . treat employees with decency and
civility. That will go a long way to prevent problems from getting to
the point where threats are made.” Managing grievances, disputes, and
even terminations in a fashion that always permits an employee to
maintain his or her dignity can greatly reduce the incentive for an
aggrieved employee to exact revenge.
A final measure—though an increasingly controversial and potentially
costly one—is careful probing of a potential hire’s work background,
even including a criminal background check. Twelve years before the
Edgewater Technology incident, McDermott had been fired from his job at
Maine’s Yankee nuclear plant. This had come months after a suicide
attempt over an alleged work incident in which he refused to put in
overtime and was disciplined. The suicide attempt was followed in turn
by what his parents said was a mental breakdown and hospitalization.
McDermott’s 1988 worker’s compensation award of $85,000 for a
“stress-related suicide attempt” was reported by the Boston Herald. A
careful background check might well have unearthed the incident—and
raised questions whether McDermott was really someone Edgewater
Technology wanted to welcome into its workplace.
Patrick Glynn, a Washington, DC-based author and editor,
has written widely on current affairs for such publications as The New
Republic, the Washington Post, Commentary, The National Interest, and
National Review.
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