March 2013

New App does a Workplace Violence Baseline Assessment

Posted on March 13, 2013 10:21 am by Caroline Ramsey-Hamilton Comment

New Workplace Violence Prevention App helps companies do an OSHA Violence Baseline Assessment

DATELINE: Boca Raton, Florida, March 12, 2013

Workplace Violence in US companies is a problem that is getting worse. Workplace violence is a serious recognized occupational hazard, ranking among the top four causes of death in workplaces during the past 15 years. More than 3,000 people died from workplace homicide between 2006 and 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Additional BLS data indicate that an average of more than 15,000 nonfatal workplace injury cases was reported annually during this time.

The latest figures show that high-risk organizations like hospitals, behavioral health treatment, home health workers and late night retail establishments are at a dramatically increased risk for experiencing a violent incident at work.

OSHA, and over thirty state government regs recommend that companies do an annual Workplace Violence Basement Assessment, but these are time-consuming and difficult to manage.

To solve the problem, Risk & Security LLC has released a new web-based app, Workplace Violence Risk-Pro©, which makes security directors into Risk Professionals!

OSHA standard 3148 (Guidelines for Preventing Workplace Violence for Health Care &

Social Service Workers)and the new OSHA Inspection Directive, Enforcement Procedures for Investigating or Inspecting Incidents of Workplace Violence, from September, 2011, are both included in the new, easy-to-use application.

The program has been tested on some of the largest organizations in the US, and runs on a laptop, PC or tablet, and even on a smartphone!. Workplace Violence Risk-Pro© is built to be affordable and simple to use.

The web 2.0 program, includes newly compiled, updated threat databases, and automated web-surveys based on the exact OSHA Directives.

The new program gives human services and security professionals a quick and easy way to conduct a workplace violence baseline assessment that will pass an audit!

The Risk-Pro© model has been used for easy software applications with the Department of Defense and over hundreds of organizations, hospitals, maritime organizatons, and local, state and federal government agencies.

About Risk & Security LLC

Risk & Security LLC is a security risk assessment and risk analysis company with over 30 years of combined expertise in security risk. It specializes in consulting on risk assessment projects and global application development of risk solutions. Risk & Security partners with security companies around the world to provide state-of-the-art security expertise to analyze risk and recommend cost-effective countermeasures.

The team of risk and security experts is led Caroline Ramsey-Hamilton, who has created more than 40 software programs, and conducted more than 200 specialized security risk assessments in a variety of environments, including companies in the United States and around the world, including in Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, Japan, South Africa and Qatar.

Why Workplace Violence is Always a Catastrophe

Posted on March 13, 2013 10:12 am by Caroline Ramsey-Hamilton Comment

Workplace violence incidents are one of the most damaging events that can happen to any organization. The good news is that workplace violence is one of the few threats that companies can actually prevent before it happens.

Unlike earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, war, and explosions, workplace violent incidents can be prevented if the organization makes a commitment to educate their employees, and give them the knowledge they need to address a potential problem with a co-worker before it gets to an explosive level, for example, making the active shooter drills part of the security program.

In many ways, workplace violence is worse than other kinds of violent incidents because it always involves a major violation of trust, and it also has a malicious component, where the perpetrator is deliberating focusing on violence against a fellow human that they know personally and may have directly worked with, sometimes for year.

According to OSHA, workplace violence is a serious recognized occupational hazard, ranking among the top four causes of death in workplaces during the past 15 years. More than 3,000 people died from workplace homicide between 2006 and 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Additional BLS data indicate that an average of more than 15,000 nonfatal workplace injury cases are reported every year.

As well as the violation of trust and the violence itself, the incidents usually terrorize both the victims and other employees, especially those who know violent individual and are left to wonder how they failed to recognize the danger signs.

Some organizations report that employees, even those who weren’t hurt in an incident, exhibit PTSD-type symptoms following an incident. And the company’s reputation is often damaged, just from the publicity of the event.

One of the main controls that protect against a violent incident, is doing a Workplace Violence Assessment. This specialized risk assessment involves interviewing employees at all levels of the organization, looking at the OSHA guidelines, such as those detailed in OSHA 3148, (www.osha.gov/Publications//osha3148.pdf).

The assessment also includes making sure that every violent, or threatening incident gets reported in a standardized way, that all the incidents are tracked, and that there is a de-escalation process that can be easily followed to prevent someone from getting to a violent stage.

There are new programs available that automate the Workplace Violence Assessment process and make it into a simple and standardized
project. To review a standardized, data-based, Violence Assessment Report, go to: www.riskandsecurityllc.com/.

How Chavez Ruined Venezuela, Up Close and Personal

Posted on March 6, 2013 10:28 am by Caroline Ramsey-Hamilton Comment

My risk assessment company was contacted in 1995 to come to Caracas and work on a variety of security risk projects for
3 of the major Venezuelan companies — PDVSA (Petroleum de Venezuela, south America), and the two gas utilities, Maravan and Lagovan.

Never had been to south America, and I was worried about security so I remember buying special security devices to take with me and then one Sunday I flew down to Miami and caught the plane for Caracas!

The first thing I noticed was that I was out by the pool, and there were men with machine guns on the roof of the Caracas Intercontinental Hotel! Later, room service delivered 7 large books, as big as encyclopedias – they were a History of Venezuela, a History of the Venezuelan Oil Industry and a few more. I guess I was supposed to read them all by Monday.

That was the beginning of a long relationship with the people at PDVSA, many of whom became friends for life. So I saw the downward spiral up close and personal. First, the crime started to increase. Places I had felt safe before, like the public square where the old men played chess at night. Then one of the women I knew was pistol-whipped at her beach house.

Slowly, Chavez replaced the business people on the corporate Boards, and the staff, of these cash-cow companies with uneducated people with no business experience. In a real world replay of Ayn Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED, these people didn’t care about maintenance, infrastructure, or security, they were the looters who wanted a total redistribution of wealth, without realizing the companies had to actually PRODUCE something to keep that cash flowing.

Within five years, as I continued to go down to Caracas, everyone I knew had left and many moved to other companies. One married and moved to Spain, several went into other petroleum operations in the US. An entire industry had been ruined by Chavez and his lack of understanding, or care, of the one income-producing business in Venezuela.

The currency was so devalued that I still have a six inch stack of Bolivars, the paper currency that was worth less than a few pennies apiece.

So it really is possible for one person to totally ruin a country’s economy and main industry, putting his ego and his desire for fame and power to ruin an entire country.

Fate has intervened to give Venezuela another chance – I hope they run with it.

Categories:
accountability
corruption
risk assessment
Threat Assessment
Threat Sources
Venezuela

The Active Shooter Threat and Why We Need to Stay Situationally Aware

Posted on March 3, 2013 9:23 am by Caroline Ramsey-Hamilton Comment

2012 will be remembered as the Year of the Active Shooter, where terrible tragedies across our country refocused people on issues surrounding gun control. In many ways, it’s that old argument about whether the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

In many schools and hospital, it could be argued that the needs of the many to be safe, and NOT TO GET SHOT, outweigh the needs of the few – to possess assault rifles and high capacity magazines, which allow them to kill a large number of people with almost no effort.

No matter what side of the debate you fall on, the debate has certainly brought the debate back from and center.

And along the way, it took the Active Shooter threat from a phrase that only a few security people knew about, into a phrase that was trending on the web and Twitter.

The Department of Homeland Security made a variety of resources available to deal with the Active Shooter Threat (many can be found at http://www.dhs.gov/active-shooter-preparedness) with tools includes a video, and booklet.

Whether you are an elementary school, like Newtown, a movie theatre, like Aurora, a regional mall, mountain resort or anything else, the number one way to counter the Active Shooter threat is to increase security awareness of the staff.

I have had teachers tell me “my job is only to teach, I shouldn’t have to be responsible for security, too”.

Unfortunately, everyone has to be responsible for good security, or we are all at risk. And again, there’s the trade-off (aka, the risk calculation):

Measure the inconvenience of having to keep your eyes open and be willing to report any suspicious behavior VS. being a casualty of a mass shooting, or having someone you know killed.

Looks like a pretty easy calculation to me:

Small Amount of Effort (no cost) = Big Increase in Security !!

Make sure you friends, family and staff are aware of the Active Shooter Threat!