In this podcast episode, Dr. Mark French discusses workplace violence, emphasizing the importance of people-first leadership that prioritizes the safety and well-being of employees. He highlights recent incidents of workplace violence and acknowledges the challenges in predicting and preventing such incidents. Dr. French stresses the need for open communication channels within organizations to address early warning signs of potential violence.
He delves into the issue of burnout in the workplace, attributing it to overwork and increased expectations during and after the pandemic. Dr. French discusses the importance of developing a comprehensive communication strategy that fosters openness and accountability.
The podcast touches on the topic of security measures, such as controlling access through badges and monitoring individuals entering the premises. Dr. French emphasizes the significance of creating a proactive culture within organizations and being willing to address the intersection of personal and work lives. He underscores the role of leaders, human resources teams, safety teams, and security teams in working collaboratively to ensure a safe and supportive workplace.
In this podcast episode, Dr. Mark French discusses workplace violence, emphasizing the importance of people-first leadership that prioritizes the safety and well-being of employees. He highlights recent incidents of workplace violence and acknowledges the challenges in predicting and preventing such incidents. Dr. French stresses the need for open communication channels within organizations to address early warning signs of potential violence.
He delves into the issue of burnout in the workplace, attributing it to overwork and increased expectations during and after the pandemic. Dr. French discusses the importance of developing a comprehensive communication strategy that fosters openness and accountability.
The podcast touches on the topic of security measures, such as controlling access through badges and monitoring individuals entering the premises. Dr. French emphasizes the significance of creating a proactive culture within organizations and being willing to address the intersection of personal and work lives. He underscores the role of leaders, human resources teams, safety teams, and security teams in working collaboratively to ensure a safe and supportive workplace.
This week on the podcast, we're talking about workplace violence. What can we do? What are the signs? How do we react this week on our podcast?
Announcer:Welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr. Mark French marks passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing out the best in leadership through creating strong values, learning opportunities, teamwork, and safety. Nothing is more important than protecting your people. Safety creates an environment for empathy, innovation, and empowerment. Together, we'll discover meaning and purpose through shaping our safety culture. Thanks for joining us this episode. And now here is Dr. Mark French.
Mark French:Hello, and welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. As always, I am so happy that you have joined has chosen to join me as we talk through leadership, but not just leadership, it's people first leadership. It's leadership that protects our people, it makes sure they go home to enjoy their lives. But it builds into so much more that leadership is really the root of where we begin the real conversations about everything else in the workforce. Once we establish that trust, once we establish that our personal well being that that social contract is met, then we can begin all those other conversations. And they build on each other as we talk about quality delivery cost. As long as our people understand that the first one the non negotiable safety, because if we provide a safe workplace, our team will begin to provide everything else back to us. And I know that's a hard, that's difficult because we are in business to make money, we have to make money at some point or we can't pay our people make sense there. But our people know that inherently they understand that part. And when we lead safety first, we're empowering them even further to care. And to give that extra effort that really takes organizations from average, to great. Anyway, glad you've joined me, it's been a couple of weeks. Sorry, I have been more busy than I expected. And then forgot my some of my equipment. So I couldn't even Mobley, do some of the work I wanted to do. So my apologies. But I'm back. So happy to be back. And you know what, let's get started. So as I said, we want to talk about workplace violence, the trend in the news. And again, I comment on this on how I can see these trends that come up each week, even across the nation. But it seems like when I'm reading through it, what really stood out was workplace violence, a targeted United States Postal Service, other people a dentist from a disgruntled worker to people at another manufacturing site. So there was in two in a hospital. So there was a lot going on from an a worker shot over something else going on in their workplace where they it's small argument with a customer and lost their life because of it. This has been a problem in our workplace for quite a while workplace violence is not new. The way we're addressing it has to be more creative, and there's no again, there's no easy answer here. It's tough to be able to see and predict and prevent workplace violence. But there are things that can be done concrete measures that we can put into place to reduce the chances the probability and the overall safety of our environment. So we think of workplace violence. We think of Have a lot of different a lot of the times there is leading up to it. There are early early warning signs that if your organization doesn't have an open communication channel, if your organization does not be prepared to address these things, and not necessarily with a no tolerance policy, because I found that no tolerance is good when there are opportunities or let me back up, the no tolerance is good when you find out the intent is there that we do not intend that but they have been blown out of proportion. And again, I'm going to thank the news media for finding all the obscure stories of where a no tolerance policy went bad. And then people see that and they go, Ooh, I better not say anything, because if I bring it up, or if I do something, I could be at risk, or I'm able to immediately lead to some very final termination and judgment. So it's better just not to talk about it. Because it escalates from zero to 100. Immediately, when really, that's not what happens in those environments. If you're going to have that you have to communicate it very clearly. What does that mean? How do we investigate? How do we protect those who were involved? How do we make sure that we're not even in the small chances passing on blame, or it's not necessary. But there's been a little bit of fear around that. And I'm kind of going down a rabbit hole here. But the real beginnings, the real root of where we need to be, is with open communications. And that is so much easier said than done. In my years of experience in the roles I'm in, and even where I've had a lot of influence, creating a comprehensive communication strategy that both creates openness, but also creates some accountability there that you can't just come in and drop it inside the door, and walk away from it. There are people who will walk in to an HR office or a Safety Office, and they'll just dump all the problems out and then go well, they're yours now and walk away thinking that's open communication where there is accountability, that communication, to do something, not just to say something, sometimes reporting is the right thing, and the only thing you can do. But some other times there are actions that have to be taken, even if it's like timely, because when I find those opportunities where someone will come in and just start giving you all the information is piled up, there's usually something that triggered it more recently. But there's a whole bunch of other stuff in the past, that is far enough in the past that we can't. It's hard to grasp it and it's hard to address it. So how do you create this open communication where you're learning what is happening in your organization, at the same time, you're making sure that it's accurate, that it's timely, and that it can be addressed, that something can be done about it. That is hard, especially with the lack of time, the lack of training, the lack of personnel, the real tightness of where we're going in organizations. Again, we started this year off with some very large companies making some layoffs. In with that comes lack of resource, lack of people in the location to do something, there's people that aren't there anymore. And the more than happens, it can when not done well when not done with good change management when not done with with real thought and intent. It can go very arrived very quickly because you don't have people there, listening to what is happening and getting that feedback and being able to react to it. One of the stressors that we're seeing in the workplace and I'm I'm kind of moving beyond my original topic, but I will go back to the topic, I promise. One of the interesting trends is the word burnout, we're hearing that more and more in the workplace. And even a lot of studies are being more studies are coming out about it because after it during the pandemic and now post pandemic, that word is becoming more common. We're seeing these stressors and all this extra work that is piled up all the extra expectations, all the extra anxiety that came with all this is starting to bubble to the surface and we're able to get enough data to really quantitatively and qualitatively see a good picture of what is creating these issues. And I want to start with that. When we come back after the break, and then we're going to lead into some prevention steps and actually get, I guess, to the real topic, but I think we're starting here with some communication and how we do that. But we'll be right back after this break.
Commercial:D is D, a consulting, learn you lead others, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator is an amazing tool. The problem is that it can be easily misinterpreted. Dr. Mark French is MBTI certified and ready to help you discover your inner strengths. The MBTI assessment can help with team building stress management, communication, conflict management, and so much more. Individual and group sessions are available to help you discover what makes you great. For more information, visit us on the web at T SDA consulting.com.
Stinger:You are listening to the leading learning through safety podcast with Dr. Mark French.
Mark French:All right, welcome back. Let's continue. So I was talking about burnout, and some of the studies that are starting to emerge. And even some books being published on the topic. One of the key reasons for burnout is overwork is having too much load on individuals that they can't do. So during this time period of turmoil, people picked up more. And they thought it would be temporary get us through the pandemic get us through this after pandemic and then it would resolve. And what happened was an organization or a company would see that, wow, we're still getting it done with this few people. And they kept it. It's like asking someone to run a marathon but telling them it's only a 50 yard dash. So they take off on the first 50 yards as fast as they can and you're like, oh, nevermind now that I see that you can sprint, I want you to sprint the rest of the time for this marathon. That doesn't work. It doesn't work long term it has to give. But as people have too much on their plate, as they're having way more to do just activity, there's less time to invest in the development of the people around them. And just simple listening skills of understanding what's happening, our head is down, we're getting it done, we're missing what's around us because we don't have time to focus on it. Or even, there's that idea that if I report or if I talk about something, that's just gonna be more work that I've got to do later, it's more stuff I have to take care of on top of all the other stuff that I'm doing. And so it creates a vacuum of communication. In like I said, a communication style for an organization is not easy to establish, it takes a lot of work. And it's never ending. It's always evolving. It's always continuously improving. When I see these reports of workplace violence, and usually it's targeted, usually there is someone that was something had been going on in their life that allowed them to be targeted, it could be even a workplace conflict. And it's usually not just one. Again, I'm using a very broad term of usually, there are always exceptions. But we're going to talk about the broader picture. And what we do. And there's, especially in the hospitals where there are, the violence may be related to mental health crisis, or a medical condition that just doesn't allow the person to think clearly of what's happening. But also just in general offices and workplaces. And so some of the very basic items that are trained are like I've seen the active shooter trainings of like, you first try to run if you can't run, you hide, if you can't hide you fight. But the first step is get away, get far away, make a phone call to report it and get yourself safe. What about before that? It begins with some simple security processes. Is your security. Robust, it is so easy to forget about, oh, well, maybe we left some, you know, bad cards activated that would get someone into the organization? Or did we never really control it or have a handle on it? That's not surprising to hear that because that takes a dedicated resource that's able to respond to it quickly. And to say, we no longer have this employee, how do we turn that off? In the case of a public building, it's even harder to predict who may come in or out. Again, it comes from being aware having people that are aware to see the signs, maybe have some kind of warning or training to understand those signs of what could be coming. And again, this is very broad in general. And I think my biggest point of trying to talk about this topic Because I am not a great security expert, I have done some security and some, at some of my organizations where we've made sure the badges are handled, the door stays locked. People don't come in together, that they come in one by one that we we monitor, and we try to stay aware of that, that, hey, if you see something, tell us about it. Don't or if you're having some if you're worried, and I've had this where someone was worried about a personal issue they were having, they came to HR and said, Hey, if you see this car, that shouldn't be here. They may be my whatever, my ex or something another and I'm concerned and you should be, you should just know. And surprisingly, we've we've actually had a situation where security called me in this was a larger facility had a security guard kind of out in the parking lot. And in a booth called and said, I think that car is like cruising around near us. It was and so we ended up getting the police involved. Just as a wellness check style thing, we were open and honest and transparent about what was happening. We informed people of what was happening. It, I like to think it did something about that. But it was the awareness and the fact that we didn't just sit back and let something happen. We tried our best to be as proactive as we could. In that's an interesting stance to take. And it takes a culture, of willingness to be proactive. It takes a culture of willingness to be vulnerable with our teams. Its willingness to listen, when something is coming up. And also, it's a willingness to bridge that very, very sensitive gap of personal and work that we try not to cross when we don't have to, in getting involved in people's lives. And there is some sensitivity there. And we have to be aware that that is a sensitivity. And it can cause some discretion, it causes some concern. But it also, we can't let me step back. Sorry. It goes back to the simple point that humans, when they come into the workplace, don't quit being human. They become someone who's helping your workplace, do things, but they do not become less human, they still have all those things in their life that are out there, that they still have to leave and go back to when they come to work. And we can't ignore the total person. So as I get toward the end here, and I'm starting to summarize, I think seeing this trend and workplace violence is scary. It's a scary topic. The first thing that we can do as leaders is to be available to our team, to listen, when our team may have concerns, and then be able to do something even as much as just keeping our eyes open or being there to try to help where we can. And that's where a great human resources team is available. Great safety teams, and even some, in some places are fortunate enough to have a security team. You have some resources, we leverage those we work as that total team, we create that total scope of communications. And that's just one piece of the puzzle. I've barely touched it. But it's a piece of me that's very personal, in making sure that we feel and we know what's happening out there. So happy you've joined me really appreciate you bearing with me as I walked through some different topics to finally get to my boy. And until next time we chat. Stay safe.
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