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The Effects Of Workplace Violence On The Workplace

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Introduction Violence in the workplace has been around for centuries. Everything from verbal abuse and harassments to physical abuse and murders have been known to happen in a business. During the 1980’s several violent attacks happened in the Postal Service, public awareness of workplace violence began in August of 1986 when a postal employee shot and killed fourteen people before killing himself. Prior to these killings, violence in the workplace was only referred to as getting injured on the job. With the attention of the media, workplace violence now has its own specific category of crime. It is tracked and studied by the FBI, OSHA and other state run organizations. As attention is always growing with workplace violence, …show more content…

According to OSHA, workplace violence falls into four different categories; criminal intent, customer/client, worker-on-worker, and personal relationships. Criminal intent is when an individual with no relationship to the business commits a crime such as a robbery, shoplifting or trespassing. Customer/Client violence is when a person has a type of relationship with the business, such as client, inmate, student etc. When this type of violence occurs, you can expect the customer to dissatisfied with their product or the way they are being treated. They may be aggressive towards the employee or security officials trying to defuse the situation. Worker-on-worker violence occurs when one employee attacks or abuses another employee. Worker-on-worker fatalities occur accounted for approximately fifteen percent of all workplace violence in 2015 (Safety.blr). This type of violence is when one worker attacks another employee, typically over an argument between each other. The last category for workplace violence is personal relationships. This is when an individual has a personal relationship with the employee but has no connection with the business. This category includes victims of domestic violence who are assaulted or threatened while at work and accounted for about seven percent of all homicides in 2014

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