Writing & implementing a Violence Prevention & Recovery Plan (VPRP) – Part 2
(NOTE: This is a reprint of an article from June of 2020.)
In the previous post, I briefly stated that you needed three groups of people to make your VPRP effective. They will assist you in getting back into functionality and recovering quickly. In this post, we’ll discuss briefly all 3. Each of these groups will have responsibilities within your VPRP and they must be allowed to carry them out without interference and contradicting orders. Fiefdoms must be put aside and everyone works together for the benefit of the organization and the people who study or work there.
- Facilities
Depending on how widespread the violence was within the facility you will need this group to help coordinate the clean-up and recovery of the facility. It will, by necessity contain everyone that would be needed to complete this mission. While this is generally an overall guideline, it can easily be adapted for any facility. Who should be included in this group?
- Maintenance/ engineers. Because they have the responsibility to assess the damage to the equipment, raw materials, and the sturdiness of the building itself.
- housekeeping
- Regular employees/support staff. If necessary, they need to bypass any limitations on repair or ordering of parts or machinery necessary in getting back to full operational effectiveness.
- Security, who must be kept informed of everything no matter how trivial it appears to others. If you bypass them by allowing changes or implementing policies or procedures without consulting them, you may need a lot of acetaminophen and acid reliever, because the confusion and headaches will be considerable…even if they are contracted, they need to be intimately involved, possibly a temporary. account manager or on-site coordinator.
- Administrative
This group should be responsible for
- Everything that is administratively necessary to get the facility operating efficiently & effectively.
- Ordering supplies.
- Approving new contractors
- Allowing new contractors into the computer system, if necessary.
- Expediting requests for everything, literally the innumerable administrative duties that will need to be handled.
- They need to have an accurate count of who was at the facility at the time of the incident and approximately where they were when violence invaded.
- Regulatory issues as well as many other sundry issues connected to these. The organization’s legal department may be placed into this group as well in order to help ease through the myriad of reports, governmental, & regulatory.
- Notifying the employee assistance program (EAP) or arranging for grief counselors and the like will also be this group’s responsibilities. They need to provide all support that individuals may need.
The administrative group will have the most emotionally draining of any group assisting in the aftermath of such an incident, and because of that they may, understandably, take more breaks and have more time off, both during and after the recovery is completed. It is also necessary to point out that the organization should facilitate this no matter what, even to the point of being short-handed for a while.
Production
No matter what kind of organization you operate, every single person you have needs to be involved in this group. From front-line employees/students (if they wish), supervisory people as well all need to kick in and do some of the dirty work of recovery.
You will need a different set of parameters for each type of organization you have to get back into operation. You need to figure out what is necessary to get operational once again, as quickly as possible.
If that means they all have to be reassigned to clean up then that is what needs to be done. Everyone who relies on the organization, for a paycheck, payment of services, and education, needs to be pushed in the right direction. It is simply that it is imperative for everyone to work together to get back to normal operations and daily life.
Twitter: twitter@robertsollars2 Email: robertsollars2@gmail.com Phone: 480-251-5197
Robert D. Sollars is the author of 4 books on preventing violence within organizations & customer service:
One is too Many: Recognizing & Preventing Workplace Violence
Murder in the Classroom: A Practical Guide for Prevention
Unconventional Customer Service: How to Break the Rules to Provide Unparalleled Service
Murder at Work: A Practical Guide for Prevention
all available on Amazon. His book-related webpage, with full information on his last 3 books: http://www.dldbooks.com/robertdsollars/
I May Be Blind, but My Vision Is Crystal Clear
Permission to reprint and share? Of course, with full attribution.
Copyright 2020 Robert D. Sollars
