In January of 2014, Illinois passed the Workplace Violence Protection Act, protecting workers against violence in the workplace. The law allows employees to petition to the court for orders of protection in their workplace.

Prevention of workplace violence is an important topic to be taught to workers across the nation.

On Feb. 22, Elgin Community College held a workshop for preventing workplace violence that was opened to faculty and staff. Jemel Townsend, an ECC facility member, managed and presented at the event.

“[The] Recognizing and Preventing Workplace Violence workshop is to provide ECC staff with information to mitigate the likelihood of workplace violence occurring on campus,” said Townsend. “We discussed pre-incident indicators to violence, prevention techniques and observation and reporting guidelines.  The purpose is to teach employees how to identify potentially violent personnel as well as how to diffuse situations that could escalate into violence.”

Education about preventing workplace violence is extremely important, no matter what profession or career. The workshop is designed to help workers identify pre-violence situations and how to manage them if escalated.

The hour-long workshop included a 20-minute video presentation, lecture and various role-playing exercises.

“Intimidation, harassment, violent acts or threats of violence will not be tolerated in the workplace. ECC strictly prohibits all acts of harassment, including harassment that is based on an individual’s sex, race, age, gender, sexual orientation or any characteristic protected by federal, state or local law,” said Eassa.

There have been no reported workplace related violence on campus so far, according to to ECC Chief of Police, Emad Eassa.

“My hope for people, for attendees of this event, is that they will leave with a greater sense of their personal role in the safety and security of everyone on the college campus.  I hope that they will feel empowered to assist in preventing workplace violence.  I hope that they also utilize the information presented to identify their own tendencies towards anger/violence in the workplace and find alternative ways to deal with stress in the workplace,” said Townsend.