How important would it be to hold an anger management at work? Believe it or not, each year over a million people in the United States are assaulted by a co-worker and approximately one thousand are murdered. The vast majority of these incidents occur over a dispute spinning out of control or someone being let go. Portions of an article from the The Ledger describes just how these things happen.
How do businesses keep employee disputes from turning violent?
Specialists in employment law and workplace relations say it can be difficult to manage employee conflicts and predict whether they will result in violence, thus making the need for holding an anger management class all that more important.
Don Grimme, a human resources consultant based in Coral Springs, Florida has said that it behooves management to become involved in employee disputes to prevent them from escalating.
By acting as a “coach” or “referee,” managers can help to defuse even minor arguments that cause ongoing tension, Grimme said.
“You don’t ignore employee disputes and say, ‘Hey, you’re adults, you handle it – thats not effective anger management,’” Grimme said. “Any gripe that an employee has, that doesn’t mean you cave into it … but you can be attuned to that and care about the specifics.”
Managers also should handle firings as carefully as possible because of the strong emotions involved, Grimme said.
Ocala lawyer Danialle Riggins said there is no clear legal remedy for employee disputes that stem from bullying or taunting.
Employees are protected against sexual harassment and racial discrimination by the law, but lesser forms of name-calling or humiliation can sometimes go unchecked and can cause anger management problems, Riggins said.
“You can do a sexual harassment policy or a non-fraternization policy, but you can’t force people to be nice to each other every day,” said Riggins, who specializes in employment law. “It’s hard to regulate behavior … you don’t know what’s offensive to one employee or another.”
“I think in a lot of cases the fellow employees are the ones who notice a problem before it happens,” said Gary Loar, an Eagle Lake-based consultant who works in conflict resolution and anger management. “Frontline people, the ones you work with, know you and the situations better than anyone else. Management has to listen to that.”
The County Commission handbook includes harassing or threatening phone calls, stalking and suggestions of planned violence as behaviors that could be classified as workplace violence and anger management problems.
This is a reprint from a blog posting at www.angermanagement.net
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