Generic workplace safety templates won’t work as workplace violence policies for employers in California, who must comply with a new state law that requires them to have an anti-violence plan in place by July 1. 

California’s S.B. 553, signed into law on Sept. 20, 2023, requires most employers to “establish, implement, and maintain, at all times in all of the employer’s facilities, a workplace violence prevention plan for purposes of protecting employees and other personnel from aggressive and violent behavior at the workplace.” 

The law defines workplace violence as “any act of violence or threat of violence that occurs in a place of employment” and includes, but is not limited to, the “threat or use of physical force against an employee that results in, or has a high likelihood of resulting in, injury, psychological trauma, or stress, regardless of whether the employee sustains an injury.” The law also applies to an “incident involving a threat or use of a firearm or other dangerous weapon, including the use of common objects as weapons, regardless of whether the employee sustains an injury.” 

Employers are grappling with the expansive definition and the requirements, which call for measures that are site-specific, said Rachel Conn, San Francisco-based head of the Cal/OSHA practice for Conn Maciel Carey LLP. 

Under the law, violence “includes stress, things that lead to psychological trauma, incidents that occur on social media, the internet. … It’s really broad,” she said. 

“The one thing that I don’t think that a lot of employers are grasping at this point is that this is not going to be just a slapped-together program and you’re ready to go,” she said. “This has to be specific to the workplace, to different operations, in the different areas” of the workplace. 

Under the law, the plan must be comprehensive, addressing everything from threat reporting protocols to escape routes. The law requires that employers provide annual training to recognize the potential for violence in specific settings and devise strategies to avoid physical harm, as well as prepare for and respond to such events as an active shooter.

The law also states that employers must “record information in a violent incident log for every workplace violence incident” and that such a record “shall be based on information solicited from the employees who experienced the workplace violence, on witness statements, and on investigation findings.”