Homicides in the workplace—677 last year—represent a relatively small share of the 18,000 to 20,000 homicides nationwide, says Eugene Rugala, supervisory special agent at the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime at Quantico, Va. But according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, each year about 1 million workers are victims of nonfatal workplace violence. “Most are simple assaults,” says Rugala.
Yet the costs are enormous. Paula Leslie, founder of Essential Life Strategies, a consulting firm in Palo Alto, Calif., says that statistics, including some from the National Center for Health Statistics, indicate that the annual tab for violence as well as stress-inducing hostility in the workplace comes to about “$13.5 billion in medical costs [and] 500,000 workers missing 1.75 million days of work.”
As frightening as the numbers are, the situation may, in fact, be even worse. “Our guess is that half of the violent incidents are not reported,” says Peek-Asa. “Some industries, like fast-food chains, don’t share their data.”
“Nobody’s immune—there’s some level of violence going on everywhere,” says Rugala. “Statistically, workplace homicide is an infrequent event. What’s not infrequent is that you have this other behavior that managers have to deal with every day—assaults, stalking, domestic violence.”
If there is any hope to be drawn from these disheartening statistics, it may be offered by Rugala, who says that violence develops over time—which means HR professionals may have a chance to spot and stop it before it happens.
“Nobody just snaps,” says Rugala. “You’ll see behavior that builds up. Then there’s a triggering event—a reprimand, a layoff, a demotion—that causes somebody to put into place their plan to act out violently. But they’ve been thinking about it beforehand. It’s premeditated.”
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