Model Guidelines
When the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health last year produced a report on workplace violence - concluding that some 1 million people a year are assaulted and 1,000 murdered on the job - it wasn't news to Patti Pearce, a human resource professional with the Kansas Department of Administration. In Topeka four years ago, a gunman walked into a federal building, firing and lobbing pipe bombs, killing a security guard and seriously injuring three others before explosives strapped to his body detonated and killed him. Pearce and colleagues created a model set of guidelines to prevent the same thing from ever happening in a state office.
Thousands of organizations, often with the help of state guidelines and resources, have developed programs before violence happens - hiring consultants, adopting policies, installing alarm systems and publicizing the availability of counseling.
State authorities, sometimes working alone and sometimes with insurers and health care professionals, are moving ahead themselves.1
Since most of us spend the bulk of our waking hours at work, promoting healthy living on the job is, in the opinion of many professionals, perhaps the smartest way to keep health care and workers' compensation costs down. Many larger companies have been promoting preventive health programs for some time, as have state governments for their employees.
"Employers want healthy employees because they are more productive and less likely to drive up heath care costs or workers' comp costs - also serious concerns of state legislators," says Brenda Trolin, director of employment issues for the National Conference of State Legislatures. "For so long, we depended on the federal government to be responsible for worker safety and health, but federal programs haven't been doing the job because they lack coordination and adequate funding."
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