Just a very quick summary in just two bullet points.

This paper from Gimeno et al. (2012) is on the relationship between safety climate and verbal abuse.

Some research papers cover a lot of data about a very narrowly scoped research question that can be summed up very succinctly.

This is one such paper.

The results are very unsurprising, but the research adds weight to our business cases for change.

We know that psychological violence is the most common form of violence and its effects are long-lasting.  Common consequences of psychological violence are anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, absenteeism, loss of motivation, loss of adaptability and creativity, etc.  It’s important that we place a high emphasis on the psychological impacts of work-related violence, and don’t downplay the impacts that psychological violence has on us as individuals, teams and organisations.

Abstract:

Objective: Low levels of safety climate and training have been associated with higher occurrence of occupational related health outcomes; workplace violence and verbal abuse could be considered an early indicator of escalating psychological workplace violence. We examined whether low level of safety factors were associated with a higher prevalence of verbal abuse at the workplace.

Methods: We used data from a cross-sectional survey administered among a stratified random sample of 1,000 employees from 10 of the 29 public hospitals in Costa Rica. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) were calculated using survey logistic regression models to estimate the association between safety factors and verbal abuse from the following sources:

• administrators
• supervisors
• patients
• patients’ relatives and coworkers

Results: There was a high prevalence of verbal abuse among the healthcare workforce from both external (i.e., patients and patients’ relatives) and internal workplace sources (i.e., coworkers, supervisors and administrators). A low level of safety climate was associated with verbal abuse from all sources with associations ranging from verbal abuse from administrators (OR = 6.07; 95%CI: 2.05–17.92) to verbal abuse from patients (OR = 2.24; 95%CI: 1.23–4.09).

Conclusion: These results highlight the need to address organizational characteristics of the workplace that may increase the risk of verbal abuse for the future development of prevention interventions in this setting.

Findings in (very) brief:

• Low level of safety training, unsafe tasks, low safety climate were related to a higher prevalence of verbal abuse
• A low safety climate increased the prevalence of abuse from colleagues and supervisors

What does it mean on the ground?

Invest in safety training for staff and leaders and improve the organisation’s safety climate and you’ll very likely reduce the prevalence of bullying, harassment and verbal abuse within your organisation.

The ROI will likely be improved productivity and lower absenteeism.

Reference:

Gimeno D, Barrientos-Gutierrez T, Burau K, Felknor S. Safety climate and verbal abuse among public hospital-based workers in Costa Rica. Work. 2012;42(1):29-38.

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