How Corporates Must Handle the Wave of #MeToo Allegations and Their Fallout
February 12, 2025
If proper procedures are the foundation of a high-performance team, then clear and open communication is the roof. Clear and honest communication between the team members and the management is the backbone for the survival of a high-performance team. It acts as a glue that binds all the team members together. Effective communication helps in […]
For implementing a change program successfully, communication is the key and one of the most complex parameters as it involves an exchange of ideas and feelings with people in an organization through various mediums. It is one of the toughest issues which an organization is faced with during the entire process of implementation of change. […]
Last year Bob Stuart was given the ‘Best Team Leader’ award because his team had delivered all the milestones accurately and on-time. Along with the award, he was also a given a greater responsibility of leading a bigger and more diverse team whose members were located in 3 different countries. But this year not only […]
Increased and improved communication in today’s internet age has led to intercultural communication. People talk and communicate across states, cultures, and/or religion. While technology has made communication faster and easier, it is important that intercultural communication is handled with a lot of sensitivity. What can possibly go wrong? People encode and decode or interpret messages […]
Various self-motivation techniques are practiced by leaders for ensuring achievement of the pre-defined objectives. Self-motivated leaders evolve and improve continuously, learn from their mistakes and are flexible enough in working upon their areas of development. Let’s find out below, some of the crucial benefits which leaders can derive by practicing self-motivation techniques at work: Leaders […]
Workplace violence is easily the most misunderstood concept in the contemporary organizational context. This is because the term is misleading and whenever one mentions workplace violence, we conjure images of rioting and destruction as happened recently in the Maruti plant in Manesar, India or the Foxconn facilities in China.
However, without discounting these incidents as being the representative, it is to be noted that any form of intimidation and harassment that result in minor injuries or even those instances of attack that are verbal in nature should be included in the definition of workplace violence.
For instance, it is common for NHS (National Health Service) hospitals in the United Kingdom to record hundreds of incidents of violent behavior from aggrieved relatives of patients and the patients themselves. Further, in India, attacks against hospital staff including on duty doctors and nurses along with ward boys are increasing.
The point here is that workplace violence is an omnibus term that can encompass all these instances of violent behavior.
The strategies to deal with workplace violence include training the staff to respond calmly and defuse the situation to prevent it from getting out of hand. Apart from this, the patients and their relatives can be counseled to adopt a less threatening approach than the one that they are pursuing and they can be assuaged. Of course, if these approaches fail, the failsafe option is to provide more security at the workplace so that the situations are preempted and prevented. This is happening in the UK and in India where bouncers and security guards are increasingly being deployed in hospitals and nursing homes so that the on duty doctors and the nursing staff feel safe and secure.
In the corporate world, stringent security, measures are being adopted that include the presence of trained security personnel who operate the reception and lobbies so that any untoward incident can be tackled immediately.
However, the strategies to deal with a Manesar or a Foxconn type of situation are yet to bear fruit since these incidents are characterized by preplanned and complete participation by all the workers who gang up on the hapless executives and managers. In these incidents, the only way out would be for the management to call in the police or ask the CISF (Central Industrial Security Force) to provide security.
The point here is that there is no difference between these incidents and riots and hence, drastic measures are needed to prevent such incidents. Having said that, having a police presence on a permanent basis is not feasible and hence, there needs to be a comprehensive labor management strategy to tackle such incidents from not recurring.
Finally, workplace violence can also mean incidents of verbal abuse and harassment and intimidation where presence of security does not help at all. The solution to prevent such incidents would be to thoroughly vet the backgrounds of the employees and fire those at the first incident itself rather than giving the perpetrators another chance.
The point here is that workplace violence of any kind is unacceptable in a civilized work setting and hence stringent and disciplined measures ought to be taken to prevent and preempt such occurrences.
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