Violence at School or Work
Understanding Occupational Violence
Violence in the workplace is an emerging problem affecting increasing numbers of workers and employers. Across the industrialised world, significant levels of low-level violence such as abuse and threats are now being reported in a range of jobs. While assaults on the job remain relatively rare, the potential for the incidence to increase cannot be ignored.
Title: Understanding Occupational Violence
Author: Australian Institute of Criminology
Series: No. 9
Date published: September 2003
Number of pages: 1
The Australian Institute of Criminology has published a report, which aims to identify and understand the problems surrounding occupational violence.
They found that when considering occupational violence it is important to separate the frequency of incidents that an employee is likely to suffer from the seriousness of an attack. Certain occupations have a high incidence of lower-level violence where there is little chance of a serious outcome. This is a completely different situation to that which security guards find themselves in. Although violent incidences are less frequent, the level of violence is much higher.
Another problem encountered when researching this subject is the low number of lower level crimes being reported. It has been suggested that as little as 10% of all incidents are formally reported.
The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (CAL/OSHA 1998) have recently developed a typology which splits workplace violence into three groups:
External occupational violence - this heading describers incidents which involve a high level of violence such as bank robberies
Client-initiated violence - this describes incidents which involve irate customers
Internal organisational violence - this can include workplace bullying or initiation rites
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Last update: Tuesday, August 26, 2008