5 Main Questions and Answers about Workplace Violence and Harassment

What is workplace violence and what is the reason for workplace violence?

There are a lot of questions around this issue and controversial but here are 5 main questions that are most concerned about:

1. What is workplace violence and what is the reason for workplace violence? Workplace violence are acts that threaten, harass, verbally attack, act to hurt other workers.

Actions that show violence at work can be rumors, swearing, hoaxing, destroying property, pushing, stealing, raping, murdering, etc. According to CCOSH (2019): Work-related violence can occur at off-site business-related functions (conferences, trade shows), at social events related to work, in clients' homes or away from work but resulting from work (a threatening telephone call to your home from a client).

The cause of conflicts comes from many situations as an individual sees another individual as a barrier to his or her work, people in an organization or a group have different opinions or just because of the selfishness of an individual who despises others.

2. Is violence and harassment at workplace really affecting the lives and mental health of workers? Workplace violence can affect all different business and career fields. All subjects such as managers, employees, workers, customers, etc. can hurt, threaten or harass workers when they are working. Workers can feel anxious and frightened and this can negatively impact their health both in and out of the workplace.

3. Do all workers know information about violence and harassment at work? 

The propagation and prevention of violence at work is increasing, but in some workplaces many workers are unaware of what protects them from harassment or violence at work. However, there are some people who keep quiet because they are afraid to affect their work or they will have to quit their jobs, this affects their income so they keep quiet.

4. Are all workers protected, voiced or compensated when they are subjected to violence and harassment at work?

There are many complaints about violence and harassment at work, but only a few of them are compensated and others do not file complaints because they know there will be no chance of compensation. It can be found that it is not effective to protect workers at work from violence and harassment. Workers who are harassed at work after complaints are more violent at workplace.

5. What measures should be taken to prevent and improve workplace violence? Develop a specific program and policy or law to prevent workplace harassment and violence, carefully review all complaints of workplace violence, pay attention to workers' behaviors and expressions and check their health and mental health regularly, propagating and strengthening knowledge about workplace violence more for workers, and so on.

There are many sources of data that provide information as well as data on violence and harassment in the workplace, which also includes information on law and workers' responsibilities. We can search for information on Goverment of Canada, Ontario or Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) website.

There are lots of detailed information and questions about issues related to Violence and harassment at work. All are legal and guaranteed to be accurate. For example, on CCOHS.ca shows questions and answers of violence in workplace that we can read and understand more about what risk in workplace, how we can improve and prevent it and some preventive measures example .