Last year I was honored to be invited by the National Restaurant Association to address the HR and Risk Management Directors of the top 100 restaurant chains in the country. The topic was employee safety related to workplace violence. I can almost imagine your first reaction to this concept, “Restaurants and violence?!” Yes.

There have been a number of instances where fired employees have come back to exact their vengeance upon former employers and even former co-workers. Some have resulted in injury, some even in death. Add to this the number of situations where domestic violence have followed (predominately) women to the workplace, again adding to the numbers of those harmed or killed, and you understand there is an issue.

Recently a $27 million judgement was leveled against one of the restaurant franchise industry’s juggernauts. Why? Two young men lost their lives in an attack which started in the parking lot, and while one was rushing his friend to the Emergency Room for care, they ran a red light and where killed by an oncoming car. Just cruise the internet (especially YouTube) and search for “restaurant fights” and you’ll see how prevalent such situations have become — and these are just the ones where someone was there to film the action.

Many of these situations involving employees could probably be mitigated with better hiring and firing practices, let alone training for HR professionals and/or managers, but certainly not all. Situations of patron on patron or patron on employee violence are harder to mitigate, but not entirely impossible. Better employee training in conflict resolution would at least help.

And yet another dynamic that has surfaced over the past few years are the numbers of cases where restaurant delivery drivers are being targeted for violence. Most of these have to do with the fact these delivery drivers are obviously carrying cash on them, even if in small amounts. In other cases, they are simply “easy prey” for would-be predators looking for such easy marks for whatever violent intent is present. In these cases, educating these drivers how to better protect themselves by enhanced awareness and avoidance would go a long way to their enhanced safety, but most owners are not willing to make these investments of time or money, thinking it will take a long time and “lots of” money. But neither is the case, actually.

TroubleSpotters.com can assist restaurant owners and operators in providing training to both internal and external employees. In some cases, it may be more cost effective to pull several such employee groups together, but in most cases this is not really a major challenge. Point being, we can help those wishing to be helped.

Just some “food for thought”.

Jeff McKissack, Founder
TroubleSpotters.com

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