Strategic HR Lawyer

This new law, effective March 7, 2007, requires that public sector employers in New York State:

"perform a workplace evaluation or risk evaluation at each worksite and to develop and implement programs to prevent and minimize workplace violence caused by assaults and homicides. The Law is designed to ensure that the risk of workplace assaults and homicides are regularly evaluated by public employers and that workplace violence protection programs are implemented to prevent and minimize the hazard to public employees."

Scenarios designated as high risk include:

• Duties that involve the exchange of money
• Delivery of passengers, goods, or services
• Duties that involve mobile workplace assignments
• Working with unstable or volatile persons in health care, social service or criminal justice
  settings
• Working alone or in small numbers
• Working late at night or during early morning hours
• Working in high-crime areas
• Duties that involve guarding valuable property or possessions
• Working in community-based settings
  

Generally, the new law requires public employers to:

• perform a risk evaluation of their workplace to determine the presence of factors or situations that might place employees at risk from occupational assaults and homicides
• prepare a workplace violence prevention program
• inform and train employees on the requirements of the Law and the workplace risk factors that were identified
• public employers with a combined total of 20 or more full-time permanent employees must develop and implement a written workplace violence prevention program and provide employee training on workplace violence prevention measures and other information contained within the employers written program.  Employee workplace violence training must be provided at the time of job assignment and annually thereafter. The written workplace violence prevention program should be pro-active, capable of assessing potential threats before they occur, and capable of responding to actual incidents immediately.

The risk evaluation should include:

• An examination of the history of past incidents to identify patterns or trends which occurred in the workplace
• A review of occupational injury and illness logs (SH 900) and incident reports to identify injuries that my have resulted from workplace violence incidents
• Surveying employees regarding details associated with the occurrence of workplace violence incidents
• Conducting physical workplace security building surveys

Training topics should include:

•  What is Workplace Violence
• Managements’ commitment to Zero Tolerance of Workplace Violence
• Techniques on how to recognize and avoid Workplace Violence situations
• What are the high risk occupations
• How to report a Workplace Violence incident
• The importance of reporting all incidents
• How and when incidents will be investigated by the employer
• Where employees can go for assistance

So why should private sector employees care about this?

• We've posted many times on this site about the instances of workplace violence that appear in the news and also have posted several times on the availability of resources to assist companies in preventing workplace violence.
  
• These requirements are the minimum standards that any prudent employer should have in place whether required by the law or not!

For more information, the New York State Department of Labor has published this flyer on Workplace Violence Prevention Program Requirements.