California's Workplace Violence Prevention Plan: What Employers Must Have on File

What the plan has to contain

• Names or job titles of the people responsible for implementing the plan.
• Procedures for obtaining employee input on the plan's development and review.
• Procedures for accepting and responding to reports of workplace violence, with a prohibition on retaliation against reporters.
• Procedures for emergency response, including alerting employees and evacuation or shelter plans.
• Procedures for identifying and evaluating hazards — periodic inspections, post-incident reviews, and review when a new hazard appears.
• Procedures for correcting identified hazards in a timely way, and for coordinating with other employers on multi-employer sites.
• Annual review of the plan, plus review after every incident and whenever a deficiency is found.

The violent incident log

Separate from the plan, employers must keep a violent incident log recording every incident, regardless of whether an injury resulted. Each entry captures the date, time, and location; the type of violence under the statute's four categories; a detailed description; the classification of the person committing the violence; the circumstances; consequences; and who completed the log. Personal identifying information of victims and witnesses must be excluded.

The log is the first thing an investigator asks for after a complaint. An empty log at a workplace where employees have reported threats is worse than a complete one.

Training and recordkeeping

• Initial training when the plan is established and annually thereafter, in a manner employees can readily understand.
• Training must cover the plan itself, how to report, hazards specific to the employee's job, and the corrective measures in place.
• Additional training when a new hazard is identified or the plan changes materially.
• Retain hazard identification and correction records and training records for five years; retain the violent incident log for five years.
• Make the plan and the log available to employees and their representatives on request, generally within 15 calendar days.

Where this connects to other obligations

California also allows employers to seek workplace violence restraining orders on behalf of employees who have suffered unlawful violence or a credible threat, and now permits those petitions to cover harassment as well. A documented plan and log make that petition substantially easier to support.

The plan also intersects with the Injury and Illness Prevention Program, harassment prevention training, and termination-security planning. Treat it as one part of a coordinated safety and employment-practices file rather than a standalone form.

Rainey Law P.C. drafts workplace violence prevention plans and trains California management teams on incident response.