The recent deaths of four people in a Midtown Manhattan office building shooting are an unfortunate reminder of the persistent threat workplace violence represents for both employers and employees. Such events can have broad impacts, including potentially fatal injuries, adverse mental health effects, and financial and operational implications for businesses.
Employers can help mitigate potential risks by updating and testing response plans and optimizing their insurance programs.
Wide-ranging effects
In 2023 — the most recent year for which data is available — 740 American workers were killed as a result of violent acts in the workplace (opens a new window), including 458 workers who died as a result of workplace homicides, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Public attention to violent acts in workplaces often results from workplace shootings, amid broader concerns in the U.S. about mass shooting events in a variety of environments. Gun violence, however, represents only a portion of violent acts in the workplace. Perpetrators may use knives and other weapons, or none at all.
Workplace violence can have wide-ranging, detrimental effects on both people and operations. In addition to fatal and nonfatal injuries, targets and witnesses of workplace violence often report post-traumatic stress, anxiety, depression, and burnout, which can contribute to absenteeism and declines in morale and productivity. Violent events can also require additional security costs and lead to reputational damage and a loss of trust among key constituencies, including current and prospective employees, customers, and surrounding communities.
Given these potentially significant effects on organizations of all types — regardless of location, size, or industry — it’s important to be prepared for violence in the workplace before it occurs.
Planning and preparation
Organizations should integrate workplace violence into business continuity, incident response, and crisis management plans, alongside risks like natural disasters and cyberattacks. Among other items, these plans should identify:
Team members who should be involved in responding to various events. Individual participants could vary depending on the nature of an organization and/or a specific event, but various functions should be represented on incident response and crisis management teams. Plans should also clearly articulate individual roles and responsibilities.
Third-party resources that can be engaged before, during, and after a crisis event. Organizations should evaluate and secure key vendors — which may include restoration consultants, forensic accountants, mental health professionals, communications advisors, and outside counsel, among others — before an event so they can engage their services in an event’s immediate aftermath, when time may be a factor.
Critical dependencies that could be affected by various types of events. What single points of failure exist in a company’s supply or value chain? If a crucial location is rendered inoperable, is there sufficient redundancy?
These plans should guide managers and staff on safety responses and be regularly updated through tabletop exercises, which can allow organizations to explore how hypothetical scenarios — for example, an active shooter event — would play out and how organizations should respond.
Tabletop exercises can allow teams to identify potential gaps in plans — for example, possible outcomes or action steps they hadn’t previously considered — and update existing plans accordingly. Exercises can also help participants understand their specific roles and responsibilities.
It’s important for organizations to engage experienced consultants to help determine specific actions they and their employees should and should not take during and immediately following a workplace violence event. These consultants can help inform key decisions to protect employees — for example, whether to instruct employees to shelter in place or evacuate, which may depend on the nature of individual work locations and other considerations. Employee assistance programs (EAPs) can also support employers as they develop crisis plans and policies and seek to educate and train employees on workplace violence prevention.
After an incident, priorities should include employee safety, communication with stakeholders, and supporting affected employees. Regular follow-up and proactive communication aid recovery and well-being. Employers should ensure all affected workers receive updates on services available, promoting emotional and physical healing. Here, EAPs can offer valuable support, providing:
Confidential counseling to employees.
Critical incident support and management, including bringing counselors onsite immediately to support affected individuals or groups.
Education and training to assist with stress management and coping.
Consultations to support company leaders who may be affected by an event.
Assessments and referrals to more specialized mental health professionals, legal services, and more.
Employers can also tap into health plan vendors for targeted communication to members about behavioral health benefits and resources available to them.
Traditional insurance coverage
Violent acts in the workplace could trigger several insurance policies companies may already purchase, depending on the nature of an incident and the losses experienced by policyholders.
General liability and umbrella and excess coverage, for example, could respond if customers or other third parties are injured. Property and business interruption coverage could also respond if an event results in property damage and/or the temporary closure of a business or specific location.
The most significant risk presented by workplace violence, however, is potential injury to employees. Any employee who is injured during the course and scope of work — whether because of workplace violence or another reason — may be eligible for workers’ compensation benefits.
Although benefits vary by state, injured workers are generally entitled to:
Coverage for medical expenses to treat and enable their recovery from injuries.
Reimbursement for lost wages until they return to work.
Disability benefits if they are unable to work and/or suffer temporary or permanent disabilities.
In the event of a fatality, a worker’s family may also collect death benefits.
Some workers’ compensation statutes include language restricting employees from making tort liability claims against employers in the event of injuries. Under these provisions — known as “exclusive remedy” provisions — injured workers can only collect state-mandated benefits.
Workers’ compensation insurance policies may present some challenges for employers and injured employees, including their inability to provide immediate payouts. In addition to medical costs, injured workers may also incur other expenses not covered by workers’ compensation insurance — for example, child care expenses in the event they are hospitalized or for vehicle and/or home modifications that may be required depending on the nature of an injury.
Moreover, employees who witness violent acts or otherwise experience adverse mental health effects but are not physically injured are typically ineligible for workers’ compensation benefits. In states where such employees are eligible for benefits, they are often limited to first responders, such as police, firefighters, and paramedics.
Additional insurance options
Given these limitations, employers may wish to consult with their insurance advisors about purchasing additional forms of coverage. Interest in these options has grown recently given stability in much of the insurance market and rising awareness of businesses’ risks following other events, such as the December 2024 shooting of a healthcare executive.
Active assailant insurance, for example, can respond to acts by perpetrators using weapons with the intention to kill or cause physical injury. These policies incorporate elements of property, casualty, and crisis response, providing coverage for bodily injury, physical damage, business interruption, loss of earnings, and legal liability for insureds. Policies also provide reimbursement for various pre- and post-event mitigation costs.
Keyperson insurance, meanwhile, provides coverage for loss of life, permanent disability, and failure to fulfill contractual agreements due to the death or illness of people on which an organization is highly dependent. This can protect insureds against the cost of losing a key executive, the loss of cash following a critical illness, potential early loan repayment, and issues that could arise during mergers and acquisitions.
In addition, workplace violence insurance can provide support to impacted employees beyond what is typically available under workers’ compensation and other policies. This includes:
Group and/or individual counseling services to employees who are not physically injured.
Reimbursement for salaries of temporary employees hired while injured workers are out.
Reimbursement for costs that may be incurred to hire additional security, which may help employees feel safe in the aftermath of a violent event.
Some workplace violence policies may enable policyholders to access additional services, including crisis management vendors and/or public relations consultants that can help them respond to and recover from an event. Some policies can extend benefits to customers or guests on company premises when an event occurs and provide coverage for business interruption losses and extra expenses incurred following an incident.
Organizations that already purchase terrorism insurance could also purchase extensions under these policies for workplace violence and active assailant coverage, which can be an efficient use of capital as the risks they insure are generally high severity but low frequency. These coverages would have their own distinct sublimits under a terrorism policy’s overall aggregate limit.
For more on how you can prepare for and respond to potential workplace violence events, contact a member of your Lockton team.