While you remain busy focusing on the workplace, some of your employees may be dealing with the impact of family issues, such as domestic violence. All too often, these domestic issues follow the employee into the workplace, directly and indirectly affecting their productivity, performance, and confidence. Want to learn more? Here is how can domestic violence can impact your workforce.
Recognizing When An Employee Needs Help:
Recognizing when an employee needs help is crucial to your business and your employees’ well-being. While domestic violence cases can widely differ, begin by staying on the lookout for warning signs at work, including:
- Excessive lateness or leaving work early
- Suddenly taking more time off or calling in sick
- Withdrawing from social interactions with other employees
- Difficulty concentrating, resulting in frequent errors and a decrease in productivity
- Personality changes and signs of anxiety, fear, or depression
- An increase in personal phone calls or visits
- Changes in appearance, such as wearing long sleeves, sunglasses, or extra makeup
- Physical signs, such as bruises, cuts, or broken bones
Domestic violence at home can also lead to security and safety concerns for your workforce. If the abuser follows or confronts the victim at work or a work gathering, everyone will need to know how to respond.
Employers can support those suffering from domestic violence and, in turn, help their workforce in several ways.
- Create a workplace domestic violence program with the inclusion of HR, legal, security, communications, EAP coordinators, and senior management. With this combination, you convey your sincerity in creating a strong program for all employees.
- Add security measures to protect employees physically and help them feel calm and more secure while at work.
- Provide training for supervisors about the realities and signs of domestic violence and how they can best interact with employees they suspect are being abused.
- Build awareness throughout your organization by providing training, adding informative posters to bulletin boards, listing resources for domestic violence victims, and regularly updating your employee handbooks, company newsletters, posters, and intranet sites.
- Finally, be willing to work with the employee to adjust work hours, shifts, and locations and allow time for counseling or legal proceedings, if applicable. Additional family issues can also be addressed in a similar manner and may include provisions for family, individual, and child counseling.
Erin Gull is Axiom’s Content Marketing Specialist. She brings over 10 years of writing experience creating copy for print and digital mediums across diverse disciplines in both the B2B and B2C space.