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The following sample policy was excerpted from The Book of Company Policies, published by HR Specialist, © 2007. Edit for your organization's purposes.

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Still, you can’t predict the behavior of your employees, clients and all their friends and relatives. You can’t anticipate or plan for every possible danger. But the law dictates that you, as the employer, have a “duty of care” to keep all individuals in your workplace safe from dangers you can reasonably anticipate, both from inside and outside forces. To do that, you need to evaluate potential dangers and formulate an appropriate action plan.

Weapons in the workplace present an obvious potential for violence. Aside from allowing designated, trained security personnel to carry them, you should explicitly ban weapons from the premises. Even in the case of security staff, carefully weigh the risks posed by the mere presence of their weapons against the potential for them to protect others from harm. Some organizations even list categories of prohibited weapons, so there’s no room for doubt.

Policy Considerations

To reduce the chance of workplace violence—or your liability if it does happen—establish a program that covers the following:

• Ban weapons, and have a zero-tolerance policy regarding threats in the workplace.
• Screen carefully by checking references and doing criminal background checks.
• Train supervisors to recognize personality changes and warning signs.
• Defuse disputes. Establish a mediation program to resolve employee disputes rather than letting them simmer.
• Evaluate your security system at least once a year. Consider whether you might need silent alarms, ID keys, cameras or even an armed guard.
• Make it a policy that any restraining orders involving employees must be reported to management, and include this in your employee handbook.
• Train front-line employees. Receptionists and front-desk clerks should be on the lookout for unusual or unsettling encounters, and have clear instructions on how to handle and report them to minimize risk to themselves and others. Every employee should be instructed as to when and how to contact the police.
• Establish procedures for employees to report threats or other violent behavior. Offer several avenues for reporting: supervisors, security personnel, human resources, or if there’s imminent danger, everyone nearby.
• Document any threats and your response to them. Your zero-tolerance policy should dictate dismissal of an employee who makes a threat. If it’s a worker’s relative or friend who’s being disruptive and dangerous, you are within your legal rights to terminate the employee, provided you give him adequate warning.

Caution: When an ADA-related disability is involved, you must generally tolerate a certain level of disability-caused conduct, but you do not have to tolerate direct, violent threats to the health or safety of others in your workplace.

• Assess how your company handles stress-inducing events. For example, what is your procedure when a law enforcement officer or process server comes to see an employee? Such confrontations shouldn’t occur in view of other employees. For instance, you could instruct your receptionist to direct the officer to a private part of the office near an outside door, then quietly ask the employee involved to report to that area.
• Terminate with care. Have someone along as a witness if you have to terminate a violent employee; consider engaging plainclothes backup security. Treat the worker with dignity, and allow a way for the person to depart quietly. Afterward, change the locks on the premises.

• Seek assistance from co-workers and attend to those who are injured.
• If the assailant is an employee, pull his personnel file.
• Designate someone to notify the victims’ families. Be sure all employees have a current emergency contact on file, and make it company policy to update the information annually.
• Inform a designated media spokesperson. (Newspapers and broadcast outlets often monitor police scanners and react quickly to potentially newsworthy events.)
• Notify your in-house counsel.
• Provide counselors trained in handling post-traumatic stress to talk with all the employees affected by the incident.
• Ask law enforcement for approval to clean up the site. You don’t want to damage the integrity of the evidence, but you do want to restore the site as soon as possible.
• Beware of looters, who might try to take advantage of your situation.
• Begin documentation of the event as soon as possible.