Effective July 1, 2024, most California employers will be required to develop a Workplace Violence Prevention Plan (WVPP). The plan must be created and implemented with the involvement of the employees. And the plan needs to be retrained every year.
The only employers excluded from this SB 533 requirement are:
- Employers where less than 10 employees are working at the location at any given time AND the location is not accessible to the public. Note that these employers are still required to have an Injury and Illness Prevention Plan (IIPP).
- ·Employees teleworking from a location that is not under the employer’s control.
- Healthcare facilities covered by Cal/Osha’s Workplace Violence standards.
- Law enforcement agencies.
Since many of our clients fall under one of the first two bullet points, you can disregard the rest of this article. For the rest of you, Your Ops Manager has resources to help you get in compliance.
Here is what you need to know:
- Every plan needs to be developed specific to the employer’s place of business, so there is not supposed to be a template. However, California Department of Industrial Relations has released a template, so go figure.
- Every location for the employer needs a different plan specific to that location.
- Once the plan is developed, the employer must conduct ongoing violence hazard inspections according to the procedures in the plan.
- Employers must maintain incident logs that detail every event investigation and it must be retained for a minimum of 5 years.
- The plan can be a part of the IIPP or it can be a separate document.
- Annual employee training records must be retained for a minimum of one year.
- Employees who request information regarding hazard identification and correction, training records, or incident logs, must be furnished with the information within 15 days of the request. And Cal/OSHA requests for this information must be furnished immediately upon request.
- The fines for not having a plan in place can be as hefty as $23K per violation.
And here is what you need to do:
- Identify the individuals at each location that will be responsible for developing, implementing, training, and maintaining the plans.
- Design a strategy to get your employees involved in developing and implementing the plan. Surveys, staff meetings, assigning teams to work together on specific elements of the plan, assigning topics to research and report back, and working together to complete the template are all viable options.
Plan to be in compliance by July 1, 2024:
- Develop, implement, and train the plan in house.
- Hire Your Ops Manager to work with your team on completing the template, doing the initial training, and providing pdf templates for recordkeeping purposes. We will charge $1,500 for this service and would need to be engaged by May 1 in order to have the plan in place by July 1.
- Consider hiring a company that specializes in this type of work to do a custom plan for your organization. Our client, Aspen Risk Management Group, would be our recommendation. Click on their underlined name to go to their website.
Please let us know if you have any questions or would like further information. Thank you!