Workplace Violence Facts

• Businesses forfeit an additional $100 million a year in lost wages, sick leave, absenteeism, and non-productivity. (Domestic Violence for Health Care Providers, 3rd Edition, Colorado Violence Coalition, 1991)
• Murder is the leading cause of OSHA guidelines that state, "Employers can be cited if violence is a recognized hazard in their workplaces and they do nothing to prevent it. Therefore, if the company has received notice that a former partner has threatened to harm an employee or has made attempts to harm an employee at work, the company will have a duty to protect that employee. This duty extends to the threatened harm, or any other harm that could logically flow from the threatened harassment, such as injury to other employees who attempt to protect the threatened employee." (National Center for Victims of Crime, Employee Liability for Workplace Violence, 1996)
• An average of 20 workers are murdered each week in the United States. The majority of these murders are robbery-related crimes.
• Workplace Bullying is the deliberate repeated, hurtful verbal mistreatment of a person (the Target) by a cruel perpetrator (the bully). The vast majority of bullies (over 80%) are bosses, some are co-workers and a few bully up the ladder. Male bullies represent 50% of all bullies. When a Target is female, 46% of the time her bully is also female. Bullying, general harassment, is more prevalent than its more famous and illegal special varieties--sexual harassment and racial discrimination. A recent reliable study estimates that approximately 1 in 5 U.S. workers has experienced destructive bullying in the past year.
• Partner violence contributes to lost productivity due to premature death: Homicide is the #1 leading cause of death for women on the job, and 20% of those were murdered by their partner at the workplace. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1993)
• The National Institute for Justice estimates that from 1987 to 1990, domestic violence cost Americans $67 billion a year.
• American businesses pay an estimated $3 to $5 billion a year in medical expenses associated with domestic violence (Bureau of National Affairs, 1990).
• An estimated 1 million workers are assaulted annually in U.S. workplaces. Most of these assaults occur in service settings such as hospitals, nursing homes, and social service agencies.
• Factors that place workers at risk for violence in the workplace include interacting with the public, exchanging money, delivering services or goods, working late at night or during early morning hours, working alone, guarding valuables or property, and dealing with violent people or volatile situations.