Workplace violence prevention plans: what California employers actually have to do

The four pieces

• A written plan, specific to your workplace, covering how employees report concerns and how the employer responds
• Training when the plan is established and annually thereafter, in language employees understand
• A violent incident log, maintained separately from the injury log, recording specified details for each incident
• Records: training records and incident investigation records, each retained for the required period

What a usable plan contains

Names or positions responsible for implementation. How employees report a threat, including anonymously. How the employer will investigate and respond. How employees will be alerted to an emergency. Procedures for coordinating with other employers on shared sites. A process for reviewing the plan's effectiveness, and correcting hazards found.

The plan should match your actual workplace. A restaurant with a late-night cash register, a clinic with an open waiting room, and a warehouse with a controlled dock have different hazards and different reasonable responses.

The incident log trips people up

The log is required even when nobody was injured. A threat, a verbal incident, a customer who becomes aggressive — each gets recorded with the type of violence, the circumstances, the location, the consequences and who was involved, without recording personal identifying information about the people involved.

The common failure

Most employers who get this wrong did adopt a plan. What they cannot produce is training records, a log, or any evidence the plan was reviewed after an incident. Documentation is the requirement, not an administrative extra.