Chapter 3
Overcoming Rationalizations, Objections, and Denials
Abstract
Chapter 3 examines what may be the biggest obstacle to the creation of a comprehensive workplace violence prevention program, which is the tendency of senior management to fall victim to various common rationalizations, objections, and denials (RODs). A commonly stated reason for not pursuing such a program is the fear that employees will be frightened by the mere discussion of the subject. Other arguments range from the costs involved to the organization’s facilities being located in a relatively low-crime area. In short, many arguments can be, and often are, made that shut down the discussion before it begins. Overcoming such arguments requires a calm response that breaks down each argument with facts – not emotions or half-truths. Historical data, a thorough understanding of the requirements and expectations under Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the realization that few well-positioned leaders like having a program such as this developed or conceived by anyone else, can help make the discussion easier and result in gaining acceptance and approval.
Keywords
imminent danger
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
rationalizations, objections, denials (RODs)
training
violence prevention
“Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.”
—Alexander Hamilton
Not having a comprehensive program for violence prevention, which defines all facets of inappropriate behavior (including stalking, harassment, and all other elements found in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration [OSHA] definition of violence) is inconceivable. The subject matter, however, makes some decision makers uncomfortable and when presenting a violence prevention proposal, it is not uncommon for it to be met with pushback, usually stated in the form of a rationalization, an objection, or a denial (more simply referred to as a ROD). The most common RODs thrown against violence prevention programs are the following:
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• We can’t train our people.
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• It’s not in the budget.
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• Our employees won’t listen, comprehend, or remember it.
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• We can’t afford to take the employees away from their workstation for a one-hour training session.
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• How often does this really happen?
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• We’ve never had any reports of trouble in the past, so why do we suddenly need this?
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• We don’t need this because our employees are one big happy family.
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• We don’t need this because our facility is in a very low crime area.
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• The training will upset our employees.
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• This training will send the message that we think there is imminent danger.
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• We don’t want to give anyone any ideas.
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• We have someone (or some department) who already handles this.
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• We have a guard at the front desk; we should be okay.
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• This training will prompt people to make frivolous allegations.
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Each of the preceding 14 RODs fall into one of three categories:
1. Financial RODs
2. Operational RODs
3. RODs based on a lack of subject matter expertise
Let’s tackle these categories one at a time.
| Financial RODs | |
| It’s not in the budget! | This probably a true statement, but if you accept “no” for an answer, your program will never get wings. |
In facing this ROD, it is important to have someone from the finance department as a part of your group. Just because you or your department does not have the budget doesn’t mean that the money is not in the organization somewhere. There may be another group that has postponed a major project and therefore has a budget surplus for the year. You don’t have line of sight into other departments’ budget performance but the finance department does, and this is invaluable knowledge. Even if the organization does not have one department with a large surplus, your finance representative might be able to find 10 departments who could each relinquish 10% of their budget. As a last resort ask how much of a budget you can be given. If the organization can only spare $1,000, you can get your plan proposed, approved, and start an informational poster program. This will make the workplace a little bit safer and show that you have a program that has been approved, an implementation schedule, and demonstrated that you have made progress. |
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| We can’t afford to take our employees away from their workstations for a one-hour training session. | Then bring the training to them!
Another key ally to have on your team is a representative from your organization’s training department. Work with them to parse out the training in smaller bites that do not disrupt the normal work processes.
• Add a 10-minute violence prevention topic to weekly departmental meetings.
• Produce a 15-minute weekly training module that employees can complete online at their workstation. In four weeks your one-hour training session has been accomplished!
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| Operational RODs | |
| We can’t train our employees. | These two rationalizations are troubling as they are condescending and insulting to your employees. All employees working in your organization have been trained to do their jobs. Employees like useful, meaningful training and everyone cares about their workplace safety. Your employees have seen news reports regarding workplace violence and their children are practicing lockdown drills in school. This topic is very much on their minds. |
| Our employees won’t listen, comprehend, or remember it. | |
| Lack of Subject Matter Expertise | |
| How often does this really happen? | According to OSHA this happens about 2 million times a year in varying formats from harassment to homicide (see the OSHA definition of workplace violence discussed in Chapter 1). |
| We’ve never had any reports of trouble in the past. | This rationalization usually comes from an organization where there is no vehicle for reporting incidents or where the incident reports are not shared with the decision maker making this statement. It is a good idea to have a response for this statement before it is made. If there are reported incidents, know how many and whether they were threats, disturbing behavior, harassment, physical assault, etc. If there is no vehicle for reporting incidents within the organization be prepared to speak to that as well. If you have not told employees that they must report incidents as defined in OSHA’s definition of workplace violence and if you have not provided a vehicle whereby those incidents can be reported, then you are not in compliance with OSHA and you are negligent for not knowing what may be occurring within your organization. Finally, it has been our experience with our clients that after receiving the violence prevention training 2% of your organization’s population will come forward and report that they have a restraining order against an outside third party who is harassing, stalking, abusing, or assaulting them. If your workforce contains a mere 500 people, then this is 10 potential acts of violence that could occur on your premises that, heretofore, you knew nothing about. |
| We don’t need this because our employees are one big happy family. | This is a statement of naïve denial usually made by someone who is near the top of the ivory tower and has no idea what is going on in the lower levels of the organization. Further, as will be discussed in the next chapter, the number one cause of workplace incidents are related to relationship violence. This is violence caused by someone not related to your workplace who commits the violent act on your premises against one of your employees. So even if your employees are one big happy family, do their outside relationships maintain the same stability? |
| We don’t need this because our facility is in a low crime area. | Surrounding crime statistics are not a factor in predicting the likelihood of workplace-related violence. Area crime statistics are great if you are analyzing your security needs to prevent robbery, burglary, auto theft, etc., but they play no role in predicting workplace violence. Workplace violence is an interpersonal crime that crosses all demographics and socioeconomic factors. Facilities in a low-crime area may even be at a greater risk because they typically lack the security precautions taken in facilities that reside in a higher crime area. Facilities in high-crime area usually have security guards, a fenced-in and controlled parking lot, good lighting, closed circuit TV systems covering the premises, and some form of access control on the facility and on the interior departments. Facilities in lower risk areas usually do not have the same semblance of security. |
| The training will upset our employees. | Lt. Col. David Grossman, author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book On Killing, discussed this rationalization in his seminar “The Bulletproof Mind.” Grossman explained that this rationalization was used when fire drills were being introduced into school systems in the late 1950s. People pushed back on fire marshals thinking that children would have nightmares about fires if they participated in fire drills. [1] As everyone knows, this did not happen. Your employee’s children are now participating in lockdown drills and your employees are wondering why you aren’t doing them as well. |
| This will send a message that we think there is imminent danger. | It could, depending on how the message is constructed. The correct message is that the organization “is being proactive and in light of the many incidents that we see in the news media, we are instituting a program to help us prevent violence from occurring in our organization.” |
| We don’t want to give anyone any ideas. | There is absolutely no data to suggest that violence prevention training causes violence. If anything, it may bring attention to situations that are already percolating within the workplace and need to be corrected. If there is someone in your organization with the predilection toward violence, this training and associated programs will not escalate his or her behavior. |
| We already have someone or some group that handles this. | What is the person’s or group’s level of training and experience? Are they trained in conducting and documenting investigations? Are they trained to assess behaviors and actions and build effective plans to safely manage these incidents or are their responses purely emotional and steeped in disciplinary action as the be-all and end-all solution? If the answers to these questions show a lack of depth in the training and experience of these people, then the status quo of your organization’s readiness needs to be reviewed. |
| We have a security guard at the front desk; we should be fine. | What is the level of training and experience of the guard? Is the guard armed? And if so, what is the level of training? Most guards are responsible to observe, report, and handle visitor administration. If an estranged husband entered the facility with a shotgun to kill his wife, is your guard trained to handle that incident or would your guard merely be the first victim. To look at it another way, if a fire was started in your lobby, you have fire extinguishers and your guard is trained in how to use them to extinguish the fire before it becomes deadly. The guard has the training and tools to handle a fire; does the guard have the training and tools to handle the shotgun-wielding ex-husband? |
| This training will prompt people to make false or frivolous allegations. | This has certainly not been our experience. Everyone takes a violence prevention program very seriously. There are issues going on within your organization at this very moment that you don’t know about. It is always best to find out about them when they are smaller issues that are easier to handle than to find out about them after a violent incident has occurred. |
Although we have dealt with the most common RODs, it is also important to understand that the RODs themselves may not be the full reason the individual who uttered them is opposing you. The RODs that the person stated might just be smoke to cover up real concerns. In most of these instances, the person or group does not want to vocalize real concerns because their concerns may tend to make them look insensitive or selfish.
The most common concerns we have encountered are:
• The person or group just doesn’t think that violence prevention planning and training are necessary.
• They think you are impeding upon territory they own.
• They think that your proposal is going to add work to their plate, which is already overloaded.
• They don’t want to hear this message from you.
The goal is to turn their concern into an advantage for you. Let’s deal with these one at a time.
The Planning and Training Aren’t Necessary
Although someone might actually feel this way, you have been provided a lot of factual reasons to overcome this obstacle. The truth is that sadly, violence occurring in the workplace has become a more common method for individuals to air their real or perceived grievances. Whether the attacker feels justified in taking revenge for some perceived slight that occurred on the job; whether the attacker has determined that if he or she can’t have the object (person) of obsession, who happens to be your employee, then no one can; or whether the attacker feels that a public mass homicide is a warranted means of fulfilling an ideology with which he or she has become aligned, these attacks are occurring with greater frequency and resulting in higher death tolls.
Because of this, OSHA requires that your organization have a plan and that it be effective. That fact, and that fact alone, should be reason enough to ultimately win your case for a violence prevention program.
Your Proposal Is Encroaching into Someone Else’s Territory
Another reason that others might push back on your proposal is because they feel that this subject falls into their job description or their department’s realm. They may feel that they already have the bases covered even though they do not have a documented and socialized plan. Unfortunately this individual doesn’t understand that a comprehensive and effective plan requires a multidisciplinary team to develop policies, processes, and training and bring about the changes needed in the workplace.
As soon as you identify the person or group, meet with that person or group and win them over. Lay out your facts in a cogent manner so that the person or group pushing back agree with your facts. Sometimes you can even get them to make your proposal for you and purport that is their idea. If so, this is a win-win all the way around!
Your Proposal Will Add Work to Their Plate
This is a common concern that can result in a ROD. The best way to combat this concern is to meet it head on. When you make your proposal, state that you and your team will bear the major workload and that the participation of the other groups will be small, mainly in the role of advisor or approver to the work your group is doing. Prior to your proposal meeting, you may want to socialize this with some of the individuals who will hear your proposal and relieve them of this concern before your formal proposal meeting.
They Don’t Want to Hear This Message from You
This is a tough one, but it does happen: For whatever reason, they just don’t want to hear this message from you. We have worked with organizations that did not want the proposal to be given by someone on their staff; they wanted the presentation to be given by someone from our consulting group. Similarly, other clients wanted to hear the proposal from their own people, not the paid consultants. In other instances, we have seen well-prepared and delivered proposals get stymied simply because the person presenting the proposal was of a lower rank than everyone else at the table.
Ways to combat this are to make sure that your proposal program is aligned with your organization’s core values, mission statement, and other programs that are currently important within your company. For example, one client made employee wellness one of their core values. They provided good medical benefits, put a gym in their facility, hired a trainer to provide off-the-clock workout sessions, and offered incentives for the employees to lose weight and quit smoking. Violence prevention became a natural outreach of their overall wellness program.
Another valuable approach is to have an executive sponsor who believes in your proposed program and can assist your efforts by getting you in front of the people you with whom you need to talk. The executive sponsor lends legitimacy to your program and your executive sponsor also has the CEO’s ear. Nothing takes the roadblocks down faster than if the CEO announces that your program is an organizational priority.
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