So I’m sitting at work Thursday morning when I receive an e-mail from the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) with the subject line:

He’s got a gun! Are You Ready for Violence in Your Workplace?

I read it and quickly turned around. “He does?” I thought. “Who’s he? What’s going on?”

My pulse quickened.

“Oh my,” I mumbled. “I picked a helluva day to quit sniffing glue.”

I took a deep breath, exhaled and then read the e-mail.

Yes, it can happen in your organization. Incidents of physical and verbal violence continue to increase in number and in frequency in U.S. and Canadian workplaces. Yes, you can be better prepared than you are now.

One possible scenario:

Tom Wilson, a 20+ year veteran employee who was laid off nine months ago, enters his old office area, chats with the security people (whom he knows well), then proceeds to the lunch room. As he enters the lunch room, he spots his ex-wife, Sandy, at a nearby table. He reaches back and pulls a pistol from his belt at the small of his back. Tom assumes a target practice stance and opens fire. In less than one minute from the time he enters the building, one person is dead, several employees are wounded, pandemonium has broken out, and there appear to be at least 11 hostages . . . . Are you ready for this scenario?

No, I’m not. I don’t even know Tom.

The entire e-mail, which is a promotion for a virtual seminar, is pasted below. Where the ellipses appear, I eliminated administrative details, like the date of the seminar, details about the cost, opt-out instructions and speakers. Make sure you page all the way down to the bottom for the unfortunate pun in bold.

Sure, preparing for any crisis is important, but does anyone else find this e-mail a tad ... sensational?

He's Got a Gun!
Are You Ready for Violence in Your Workplace?

...

Yes, it can happen in your organization. Incidents of physical and verbal violence continue to increase in number and in frequency in U.S. and Canadian workplaces. Yes, you can be better prepared than you are now.

One possible scenario:

Tom Wilson, a 20+ year veteran employee who was laid off nine months ago, enters his old office area, chats with the security people (whom he knows well), then proceeds to the lunch room. As he enters the lunch room, he spots his ex-wife, Sandy, at a nearby table. He reaches back and pulls a pistol from his belt at the small of his back. Tom assumes a target practice stance and opens fire. In less than one minute from the time he enters the building, one person is dead, several employees are wounded, pandemonium has broken out, and there appear to be at least 11 hostages . . . . Are you ready for this scenario?

What about the quiet bully, she pushes everyone around, always gets her way, and even though every boss and supervisor fears her and knows of her behavior, nothing is being done? She spots you and is heading your way . . . you are instantly uncomfortable. She publically berated you last week.

What of the irate customer or ex-patient who wants to take his revenge on those he perceived wronged him?

According to the U.S. Department of Justice:

1. 1.8 million U.S. employees are assaulted in their workplace annually
2. During the last five years, 14% of Canadian homicides occurred in the workplace
3. England, France, and many other European countries report expanding levels of workplace violence

What are you doing to be prepared for this huge and growing workplace problem? These incidents have enormously high visibility and extremely long-term organizational impact. Are you ready to prevent, mitigate, and de-escalate the circumstances of such events? To properly and safely respond to the worst case scenarios when they happen?

On Wednesday, June 24, 2009, step out of your comfort zone ... to learn about workplace violence prevention, detection, de-escalation, and response approaches.

These two highly experienced experts will discuss the practical components of workplace violence prevention and response programs. They will walk through several cases, talking about the patterns of behavior to expect, the extraordinarily emotional outcomes that these situations cause, and will provide a number of important checklists to help you assess, prepare, rehearse, and execute should situations of violence occur where you work and where you have some responsibility.

You will also walk through response framework templates you can adapt to your organization. You will come away from this program being better able to prevent, detect, deter, de-escalate, and respond to these potentially devastating situations.

Topics:

- 3 components of the ideal workplace violence program
- 4 types of workplace violence
- Advising management (helping to manage their emotions)
- Assessing the violence threat potential of management decisions
- Behavior indicators
- Communicating in explosively emotional circumstances
- Conducting a threat investigation/assessment
- De-escalation techniques
- Detecting early warning signs
- Enhancing safety while reducing contention
- Long-term impacts of localized violence events
- Management briefing strategy
- Managing the victims
- Mitigation strategies
- Patterns of the most devastating workplace violence circumstances
- Planning for triggering or precipitating events (i.e., terminations)
- Safe response strategies
- Using the threat management team approach

Target Audiences (no pun intended):

- Corporate communicators
- Corporate leaders
- Crisis managers
- Employee assistance specialists
- General counsel
- Human resource managers
- Outside agencies
- Safety officers
- Security directors
- Shop stewards/labor leaders