Workplace violence statistics are hard to come by because they’re scattered all over. But we know it’s serious and we know that you need to act to help keep your employees safe and keep yourself out of court.
Here are some statistics from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the U.S. Department of Justice for the United States.
There were 1.7 million violent workplace victimizations every year between 1993 and 1999. That’s the last year, sadly, that we seem to have comprehensive statistics.
Workplace violence accounted for almost a fifth of all crime in the same period.
Every week, 20 people are murdered and 18,000 are assaulted while they’re at work.
Homicide is the leading cause of death from occupational injury among females and the second leading cause of death from occupational injury among males.
I don’t know about you, but I find those numbers both startling and disturbing. The people who work for you are at risk if you hire someone who is violence prone and that person attacks, injures or kills someone on the job.
You’re at risk, too. If you hire someone who kills or injures another person at work, you could be sued for negligent hiring.
To help keep everybody safe, make a criminal background check a part of your hiring process for all employees. Scour the report for warning signs of potential violence. It’s one of the simple things you can do to keep your people safe and keep yourself out of court.