Slayings Inspire Tighter Job Screening : Workplace: Personnel executives say improved pre-hiring testing, counseling are best way to deal with violence on the job.
Even as San Diego companies and public agencies tighten security in the aftermath of the Jan. 24 shootings at General Dynamics, those in charge of hiring say the best and perhaps only way to deal effectively with the growing problem of violence on the job is with pre-employment screening and on-the-job counseling.
Several local companies say they have alerted supervisors to be more attuned to employees’ aberrant behavior and mood shifts and, if problem behavior persists, to stress the availability of outside psychological, financial and substance abuse counseling through Employee Assistance Programs, outside services that many companies now offer their employees.
Counseling employees before anger escalates to violent outbursts are employers’ best chance of avoiding the kinds of workplace shootings that occurred twice in San Diego County last month, said Terry Mendez, president of San Diego Society for Human Resource Management, an association of some 400 personnel and human resource specialists.
“We need to be focused, sensitive and aware when people have a problem on the job,” he said. “If someone has a mood change, a behavior change, that would indicate there are problems that need to be taken care of.”
Some say pre-employment tests are helpful in screening out violent applicants. Yet personnel executives bemoan the legal limits on the tests. In fact, the most widely used screen for aberrant behavior administered to job applicants, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, is being challenged before the state Supreme Court this session.
Other hiring experts said this week that resumes will be more carefully screened for suspicious or missing “blocks of time” in an applicant’s work history that could indicate past work-related problems.
Stephen H. Heidel, a psychiatrist and head of Health and Human Resource Center, a San Diego-based EAP with 125 corporate clients, stressed that companies that do not already require drug tests of job applicants should reconsider because so much of violence within and outside the workplace is drug- and alcohol-related.
Preventive measures aside, there is a growing fear among hiring executives that, in David Thomas’ words, “It’s kill the messenger time.” Thomas is human resources director at Ketema Aerospace & Electronics in El Cajon and was referring to how it often falls to personnel staff to give fired or laid-off employees the bad news, exposing the personnel staff to the greatest risk.
“Certainly, what happened at General Dynamics makes all of us a little nervous about looking over our shoulder,” said Thomas, whose company, a manufacturer of jet engine parts, employs 500. “We’re certainly reviewing our security to have controls set up and to see if there is anything we can do to make sure they work.”
The emphasis on security and other preventive measures are part of what companies are doing to avoid the kind of incident that left General Dynamics human resources representative Michael Konz dead and supervisor James English seriously wounded. A disgruntled ex-employee, Robert Earl Mack, is being held in connection with shootings.
Five days after the General Dynamics incident, Juan Lopez-Rodriguez, a supervisor at Professional Care Products in San Marcos was shot and killed. An employee, Jose Luis Maldonado, is charged with the slaying.
The killings were hardly an isolated incident in San Diego County. Last June, two Elgar Corp. executives were gunned down in the plant by a man police identified as Larry T. Hansel, who had been laid off three months before the shooting.
In August, 1989, two Escondido postal workers were killed at the Orange Glen station by fellow worker John Merlin Taylor, who also killed his wife before turning his gun on himself. Taylor was still a postal employee when the shootings occurred.
In the wake of the shootings and concerns among employers that the violence could be repeated, several observers offered theories to explain the upswing in violence. Many agreed that the root of the violence lies not so much in changes in the workplace as the growing importance of work to people.
Psychologist Nancy Haller, whose San Diego-based firm called Applied Psychometrics administers pre-employment tests to job applicants, said workplace shootings illustrate the disintegration of family, church, neighborhoods and other social safety nets.
“Families are eroding, the divorce rate is higher than ever and so jobs have become substitutes for families. People have turned to work to get those basic needs met. With the recession, workplaces are downsizing and the people affected are angry about that. Those who lose their jobs feel they have nothing to lose because they have lost everything,” Haller said.
“An employer is a parent of sorts and you have a responsibility to those people, which doesn’t mean (companies) have to be incredibly nurturing, but they do have a responsibility that individuals are getting a support network or a place to turn to in times of trouble.”
Haller and others said, however, that no amount of counseling is going to stop troubled employees from committing threatening or violent acts. That’s why the use of pre-employment screening tests such as Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory to detect “aberrant behavior” in applicants is so important.
Haller said the MMPI is used by many police departments and security guard agencies to screen out people with a propensity for violence, “hyper-vigilance” or paranoia, and “tendencies to addictive behaviors, such as alcoholism, drug abuse or eating disorders, which could be red flags.”
But personnel departments have to be sure there is a “compelling need” to administer the MMPI or any other pre-employment test or face possible job discrimination suits from rejected applicants. Job applicants have sued employers alleging the tests are violations of their rights of privacy, Haller said.
There are realistic limits, however, on how much testing a company or public agency can do, said George Flanigan, certificated personnel director for San Diego Unified School District.
“There has even been discussion of personal psychological evaluations of some employees. Should everyone take a psychological test? Well, you can imagine how much money is involved with that and the question is, is it reliable?” Flanigan said.
Meanwhile, several San Diego companies and the San Diego Unified School District said they are implementing tighter security measures in wake of the recent shootings.
Companies declined to describe on the record what types of new security they are imposing at their plants, but the new measures include placing emergency buzzers in executives offices, more security guards, escorts for visitors and using private investigators to look into the threats of past or current employees. The San Diego Unified School District, for example, is adding a security guard at its Normal Street administrative headquarters.
George Schmalhofer, head of Excelsior Investigations in San Diego and a former U.S. Secret Service agent, has been retained by three local companies to look into threats of ex-employees. His investigations involve thorough background checks for a history of violence and usually involve a visit with the terminated employee.
“The key to the whole thing often is just to be someone that these people feel comfortable with, that they can state their frustrations to, to let the people blow off steam,” Schmalhofer said. “I’m not a psychologist, but I know how to listen and hopefully when I leave everyone is happy, including the disgruntled employee.”
