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Workplace aggression and violence.

“…There is overwhelming evidence of the prevalence and negative impact of workplace aggression as well as increasing legal obligations on the part of employers to provide safe work environments, yet organizations are often ill prepared to prevent or respond appropriately to incidents of workplace aggression (Kelley & Mullen, 2006). Howard (2001) found that only 8.75% of organizations had a workplace aggression policy. There are a variety of reasons why many organizations can fail to adequately prepare or address workplace aggression, including having a false sense of security that human resource mechanisms (e.g., grievance procedures) will prevent aggression as well as a lack of consistent and strong empirical evidence clearly indicating which strategies are likely to be the most effective in organizations (Pearson & Clair, 1998).…”

“…Leaders and managers often set the informal tone for acceptable behaviors in the workplace, but such behaviors can also be formalized through the creation and implementation of a workplace aggression policy. As noted above, less than 10% of organizations have a workplace aggression policy in place (Howard, 2001). This is surprising, given that workplace aggression policies are associated with lower levels of supervisorinitiated aggression (Schat, 2004).…”