Workplace violence

In a tragic incident, the DGM (operations) of Graphite India Ltd – Powermax Steel division, was killed when some suspended workers staging ‘dharna' outside the plant at Bolangir (Orissa) stopped his car and allegedly set it on fire. This is not an isolated incident of violence by employees against employee(s).

In a similar case, in September 2009, the Vice President (HR) of an auto manufacturing company was killed by a group of sacked workers in his cabin in the company's unit about 20 km from Coimbatore. Earlier, in September 2008, at Greater Noida, the CEO and Managing Director of Cerlikon-Graziano Transmission India Pvt Ltd was killed by a agitating workers.

All such incidents fall under the category of ‘Workplace violence'. This, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. Many such incidents go unreported and don't make news headlines.

The purpose of writing this piece is four-fold.

Awareness : What exactly is workplace violence? Is it only homicide?

The ILO has a much broader description. Workplace violence could be physical or psychological, anything at place of work that may fall under homicide, rape, kicking, biting, punching, harassment, including sexual, and racial abuse, bullying, mobbing, victimising, leaving offensive messages, name-calling or deliberate silence. Greater levels of awareness are required in organisations, both amongst managers and workers.

Growing Menace : Workplace violence has pervaded global borders, work settings and occupational groups. About 30 personnel from the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police to constable were booked by Delhi Police on sexual harassment charges in the past three years. The ILO report says some workplaces and occupations have become high-risk and women are especially vulnerable.

Action : Workplace violence needs to be tackled with immediacy and toughness. There are, however, two hurdles. The first one is of ‘reporting'. Many incidents of workplace violence go unreported or are reported very late (after the damage has been done) primarily due to fear of repercussion and lack of awareness. The second problem is absence of a strong legislation to deal with all forms of workplace violence. In such a scenario not all organisations do enough to curb such incidents. We definitely need more teeth both in terms of legislation and reporting. Countries such as Canada have drafted legislation to deal with workplace violence.

Prevention : An even more important aspect is prevention of workplace violence since once an incident happens, considerable damage is done. Understanding causative factors, the psychological and behavioural patterns of people engaging in workplace violence may help prevention. But this requires considerable research and study.

It is high time the government and organisations paid attention to preventing/dealing effectively with workplace violence.

(The author is Professor and Chairperson – Organisational Leadership and Strategy Area, School of Business, Alliance University, Bangalore.)

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