Violence Hits Most Firms, Survey Says : Workplace: More than half of U.S. companies had incidents in last four years. Early intervention is needed, analyst reports.

Violence leading to serious injury or death has become a frightening reality in the workplace, with more than half of U.S. companies reporting incidents or threats of violence in the past four years, a survey says.

One-third of the companies said violence occurred more than once, according to the survey by the American Management Assn. made available Thursday.

“The violence in the streets of America has opened the door and walked into the workplace,” said Chris Hatcher, clinical professor of psychology at the University of California, San Francisco, who helped interpret the data.

He said the findings point to “the need to apply coordinated early intervention to prevent more incidents.”

Of the 589 human resources executives surveyed at the association’s human resources conference being held in San Francisco, 26% said the most recent incident was instigated by an employee, with another 10% caused by a former employee.

Six percent said a client or customer created the problem, and 6% blamed outsiders with no previously known connection to the company.

More than one-third of the incidents resulted in death or serious injury, the survey showed. Death occurred in 16% of the incidents, with another 19% resulting in injuries requiring hospitalization.

A greater number of reported incidents claimed multiple victims (45%) than single victims (38%).

The victim was the attacker’s co-worker in 28% of the cases, companies reported. A direct supervisor was the victim in 15%.

The nature of the most recent incident involved threats of violence (45%), assault with a weapon (18%) and harassment (14%), the companies said.

Most companies had to learn the hard way how to deal with violence, the survey showed. It was not until a serious incident occurred that 44% of them began training programs to deal with the problem, compared with only 20% of companies with no direct experience with workplace violence.

According to Eric Greenberg, the association’s director of management studies, “there are usually early warning signs, particularly when employees are involved. All too often symptoms are ignored until the situation becomes severe.”

A quarter of the respondents reporting violent incidents said early signs of trouble had been ignored by the eventual victim, and the same proportion said signs were ignored by others within the organization.

The survey was conducted for the American Management Assn., a not-for-profit management education group, by Technometrica Applied Quantitative Research, of Emerson, N.J.