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Violence at work takes many different forms: it can be used as a means of power between workers and customers, to express competition between workers and, in its extreme form, can result in suicide. One of the major findings of the French government-initiated Commission on ‘Violence, work, employment and health’ is that the type of work organisation in the company can either contribute to - or prevent - the onset of violence.
The multi-disciplinary commission, comprising sociologists, physicians, psychologists and experts, published its final report in March 2005. The study is one of the preliminary analyses on various themes that will be used as the basis for drafting a national violence and health programme.
Incidence of violence at work
The report points out that, in France, in ordinary places of work (as distinct from certain illegal activities), the use of violence as a means of power is rare. However, violence can manifest itself in many different ways in workplace social relations:
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Bullying or threatening actions can occur, such as ganging up on new people, particularly in jobs highly exposed to physical risks (construction, etc). Such behaviour may be a form of psychological protection from difficult working conditions, but can eventually also enter the worker’s private life (resulting in mental health concerns for relatives).
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Acute violence (e.g. sabotage of a nuclear plant, hostage-taking, suicide), which the report analyses as a symptom of severely dysfunctional working relations. The working community does not function as a means to defuse the potential violence of workers: those who see themselves as victims of injustice meet resignation or indifference from their colleagues.
In the past year, the biggest source of violence for workers has been social, and mainly impacts on the services sector. The list of professions affected is constantly growing: banking officials, police, firefighters, hospital nurses, social services workers, public transport workers, teachers, etc. This violence is mainly observed in areas with high levels of unemployment and poverty. Collective ‘rituals’ of violence develop, targeting symbols of ordinary society, such as public services and shops. As a result, violence has become a daily fact of life in the services sector.
Underlying causes
Apart from the social factors that generate social violence, the report identifies certain trends in social and work relations in recent years that impede the capacity of an organisational framework to deter violence:
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staff reductions, which increase the workload for remaining staff and tend to make people dissatisfied with each other’s work;
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mergers, takeovers and other forms of restructuring, which destabilise the working community, resulting in individuals feeling isolated, and a decrease in colleagues’ capacity to defuse violence;
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pressure from individual performance assessments, which can lead to competitiveness and a deterioration of working relations, isolation and loneliness, with some employees resorting to forms of cheating to meet objectives.
The report concludes that these various trends all result in a dismantling of support structures, undermining the sense of cooperation among colleagues, and corroding the basic principle of living and working together (‘vivre ensemble’), all of which had served to underpin the prevention of violence at work. It advocates strongly that social relations at work should be considered during any re-organisation of production processes.
Prevention strategies
The report underlines the importance of cooperation in the workplace: cooperation that does not result from a hierarchical structure, but from discussions between workers on practical measures to establish working methods. This sense of working together is based on communication that has the trust of all actors, with the necessary freedom and space for open dialogue, and which is made possible by organisational decisions on the part of management. These are important issues for the organisation, with far-reaching impacts beyond the sole consideration of productivity and profitability criteria.
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