Walmart shooting raises need for violence prevention

NEW YORK • The mass shooting Wednesday at a Walmart in Virginia was only the latest example of a workplace shooting perpetrated by an employee.

But while many companies provide active shooter training, experts say there is much less focus on how to prevent workplace violence, particularly how to identify and address worrisome behaviour among employees.

Workers far too often don’t know how to recognize warning signs, and even more crucially don’t know how to report suspicious behaviour or feel empowered to do so, according to workplace safety and human resources experts.

“We have built an industry around how to lock bad guys out. We have heavily invested in physical security measure like metal detectors, cameras and armed security guards,” said James Densley, professor of criminal justice at Metropolitan State University in Depaul, Minnesota and co-founder of the non-profit and non-partisan research group The Violence Project. But too often in workplace shootings, he said, “this is someone who already has access to the building.”

The Walmart shooting in particular raised questions of whether employees feel empowered to speak up because it was a team leader who did the shooting.

Walmart launched a computer-based active shooter training in 2015, which focused on three pillars: avoid the danger, keep your distance and lastly, defend. Then, in 2019 after a mass shooting at an El Paso, Texas, store in which an outside gunman killed 22 people, Walmart addressed the threat to the public by discontinuing sales of certain kinds of ammunition and asked that customers no longer openly carry firearms in its stores. It now sells only hunting rifles and related ammunition.

Walmart didn’t specifically respond to questions seeking more detail about its training and protocols to protect its own employees.

Densley said employers need to create channels for workers to voice concerns about employees’ behaviour, including confidential hotlines. He noted that too often attention is focused on the “red flags” and workers should be looking for the “yellow flags” — subtle changes in behaviour, like increased anger or not showing up for work. Densley said managers need to work with those people to get them counselling.

But many employers may not have such prevention policies in place, said Liz Peterson, Quality Manager at the Society for Human Resource Management. She noted that in a 2019 SHRM survey of its members, 55 per cent of HR professionals said they didn’t know if their organizations had policies to prevent workplace violence, and another 9 per cent said they lacked such programs. That was in contrast to the 57 per cent who said they did have training on how to respond to violence.

WE HAVE BUILT AN INDUSTRY AROUND HOW TO LOCK BAD GUYS OUT.