You can take action!
To form an overview of risk factors that is solidly grounded in the organization’s realities and to gain a better understanding of the risk factors present, you could also collect other important information that will help you grasp your organization’s context and history. The information you collect will shape the overview you form.
For example, you could compile a brief history of industrial relations and past incidents of violence. The absence of complaints or reported incidents of violence does not mean, however, that there is no violence in the organization.
For an indication of the potential presence of violence in the organization and its impacts on workers’ health, you could also form a simple overview of the prevalence of psychological health problems in the workplace using information held by the Human Resources Department. In this case, you would be looking for information such as the absenteeism rate, cost of insurance (OHS), or personnel movements (e.g. staff turnover, resignations, dismissals, reorganization of teams), which may be indicative of problems within the organization.
Regardless, the conditions under which the organization is currently evolving (e.g. new goals, major restructuring, organizational merger, changes in management, new technologies and/or policies, new clientele) must be taken into account in the process, again, right from when you form your overview of the risk factors.
These types of information are needed in order to explain and better understand the presence of certain risk factors. For example, a temporary context such as the upgrading of the organization’s computer system can momentarily create a work overload for employees, which does not mean that they always have a work overload. Such contextual factors will also be taken into consideration in steps 3, 4, and 6 and will guide the development of the action plan.
The different types of information needed can be compiled at the bottom of the first section of the Checklist for Identifying Risk and Protection Factors.
TIP
How to collect this information
To obtain information on the characteristics of the workplace, initially it may be helpful to consult some of the organization’s documents, such as:
- its annual report (e.g. for information on the organization’s activities and productivity, but also on the context in which it is evolving and important events)
- reports or assessments produced by the organization’s Human Resources Department (e.g. workforce forecasts; information on worker health, such as absenteeism rates or compensation payments for sick leave)
- the organization’s policies and procedures (violence prevention policy, procedures for handling incidents involving violence)
- reports from the complaints commissioner, if there is one (to obtain the number of complaints related to workplace violence)
If complementary information is needed, key informants (e.g. people in the Human Resources Department or union structures, people in charge of developing policies, people in the Financial and Physical Resources Division, in the Health Department, Archives Department, Documentation Centre) could be consulted when forming the overview.