Case Management Strategies for Workplace Threats of Violence: An Interactive Session

This presentation will focus on three commonly encountered workplace threat scenarios; the paranoid employee, the romantic triangle and the aggressive and/or disgruntled employee. Strategies to assess and manage these cases, and key intervention decision points will be discussed. The audience will participate in a structured small group exercise to address and respond to real cases. Each scenario will be debriefed by the presenter. The goal will be to demonstrate reliance on empirical information regarding different “perpetrators” in the context of applying careful judgment and necessary multi-disciplinary collaboration, resulting in an improved understanding of risk potential and management of these difficult cases.
Stage-setting, brief summary of intervention principles
Dynamic interplay of assessment, response, re-assess, response, etc.
Intervention dilemma
Any intervention can make matters better, worse, or have no effect: think first
The Workplace Assessment of Violence Risk (WAVR-21) Short Form
Employer/Campus common mistakes
superficial assessment component
well-intentioned misguided responses
responses driven by a single discipline, e.g. legal
Violence risk assessment principles should guide intervention decision making
3 succinct case presentations of workplace threat scenarios
Common concepts for each scenario:
do’s and don’ts
interview strategies
discerning whether the individual is on the pathway to violence
steps in the response
resolution options
The paranoid employee
a serious case management challenge regardless of violence risk
the paranoid’s inevitable course, management issues
identify different varieties and causes of paranoid behavior, response/treatment options
assessing violence risk in paranoid individuals
the highly litigious persistent paranoid: special considerations
The romantic triangle in the workplace
issues of domestic/intimate partner violence risk
interviewing and collaborating with the female target
strategic issues with each of the parties
The aggressive and/or disgruntled employee
a current look at the marginal member of society, “circling the drain”, with financial problems, suffering “unbearable losses”, angry at institutions and specific targets, entitled and grandiose and coping poorly
assessing risk: to self only, to others or to both?
Whether an insider or outsider, a very common problem to organizations in the recession economy
Objectives: At the end of this program, participants should be able to:

List at least two common mistakes made by employers or campus personnel in risk assessments
Identify at least three common concepts in workplace violence threat assessment
Describe several management challenges to having a paranoid individual in the workplace
Demonstrate through practice cases the ability to accurately assess risk of violence