For Violent Incident Recovery, Listen and Lead with Compassion
Organizations can do everything right. They can have robust security measures in place to prevent intentional acts of harm on their campuses and respond quickly when something unusual occurs. They can foster a workplace culture of inclusion and support. They can hire and retain great managers who keep their teams engaged, connected, and fulfilled with the work they do each day. And they can still have a team member be injured or killed at work in an act of violence.
It's a harsh but sad truth. In the United States alone in 2023, 740 people died in violent acts at their workplace—including 458 people who were killed in homicides, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In active shooter situations during that same time frame, the FBI tracked 48 incidents that killed 105 people and wounded 139 others at education institutions, houses of worship, businesses, and government offices.
Globally, there is no agency that formally tracks the number of people killed in homicides at work. But the International Labor Organization (ILO) found that 2.93 million people died as a result of work-related factors in 2023—presumably some of those involved intentional violence to harm another person.
After an act of workplace violence, law enforcement typically takes control of the scene. Officers collect evidence, interview witnesses and first responders, and then release the area back to the organization as their investigation continues. Clean-up and managing the recovery will be left up to the organization itself.
There is an extensive amount of guidance on what organizations can do to prevent acts of violence at their facilities. But the path forward after a tragedy at the office is more nuanced.
“In events such as an active assailant, most of the time you’re starting from tragedy,” says Graeme Hudson, vice president, crisis and security consulting, at Crisis24. “There is no good outcome. So, it’s how you manage through this as best as possible in an appropriate way.”
Start with Compassion
With a multi-decade career in security, Robert Dodge, CEO of Global Risk Services, Prosegur, knows from experience when managing through a crisis goes well and when it doesn’t.
He was working for another firm in the early 2000s when one of its contract security officers murdered several other contract security officers on duty. After the incident was resolved, Dodge says regional HR and executive personnel descended on the local office to assess what happened and next steps. The assessment quickly took an accusatory approach, with “heavy-handed” individuals questioning employees about what they knew about the perpetrator and steps they should have taken, instead of thinking about how to help the employees in their time of need, Dodge recalls.
“I saw firsthand of how not to do that, coming in strong and hard, and getting in front of people who may be traumatized,” Dodge recalls of the post-incident aftermath. “One person can cost a company millions of dollars if they screw all that up.”
Instead, Dodge recommends starting with a compassionate approach that focuses on taking care of people first. Security leaders can do this by being part of the crisis management team, which was likely stood up to respond to the incident and will work on the path forward towards recovery.
As members of this team, security leaders can provide guidance to the CEO and other decision makers on life safety issues, evidence preservation for impending investigations, and asset preservation for the protection of core assets, according to the ASIS International Workplace Violence and Active Assailant Standard.
At the same time, security leaders will also participate in crisis containment, including gathering facts about the incident, securing and containing affected physical areas, separating witnesses, and anticipating and addressing other steps needed to preserve safety, the standard explained.
Both crisis containment and crisis management require strong communication skills with external and internal stakeholders about what occurred, what information the organization has available at the time, and what next steps are. The standard noted that notifications about what happened should be given to managers, employees at large, next of kin and partners of victims, regulatory authorities, and the news media.
Most organizations have a communications team—either in-house or contracted—but Hudson says that in instances of significant violence at the office, it might be appropriate to work with a communications team experienced in managing crisis communications to avoid making light of the incident.
There is no good outcome. So, it’s how you manage through this as best as possible in an appropriate way.
The communications plan should consider victims impacted by the incident, their families, and the family of the perpetrator, Hudson says.
“The threat actor is often overlooked—the gunman or person is vilified and often their families are neglected,” he explains. “They’re also impacted heavily by the loss.”
If an employee was killed or seriously injured and requires medical attention, the standard recommended standing up a family representative program to act as a liaison between the family and the company. That role will vary depending on the incident and the organization, says Diana M. Concannon, PsyD, PCI, associate provost, strategic initiatives and partnerships, and dean of the California School of Forensic Studies at Alliant International University.
For instance, a smaller organization with a tight-knit staff might have an employee who already has a good rapport with an affected colleague and their family. That person could volunteer to serve as the liaison.
If the organization is more hierarchical with a respected chain of command, though, Concannon says it might make more sense for a senior leader to serve in the liaison role. Even if that person did not have a personal relationship with the victims, his or her status as a high-level person might provide a sense of respect and gravitas that is appreciated, she adds.
In some cases, if there are liability concerns about the incident, the organization might tap an HR team member or internal legal counsel to act as the family liaison. Regardless of the person reaching out, Concannon says the focus should be on being compassionate and sensitive to the family of the affected team member.
“The goal is to truly connect with the family member at this time,” she adds. “And express that on the work basis, this individual was part of a work family and will be missed as such and is being missed as such. That there’s a respect that they were also part of a primary family, and the work family is respectful of that and wants to ensure that its actions are aligned with and respectful of anything the family…would like to see.”
Hudson adds that if a colleague is killed at the office, the organization can also use the liaison to communicate that the family will still receive that individual’s paycheck and other benefits for a certain amount of time.
“It can be as base level as reassuring them that they are still going to receive pay to be able to pay their rent or their mortgage,” Hudson says. “It can be making sure the family liaison arranges delivery of groceries—very simple stuff that allows individuals to grieve and concentrate on that while the company wraps its arms around everything else.”
This can be difficult to do, but it is important to both show support for the affected family and to also limit future liability. Hudson says that in his experience of dealing with kidnap and ransom situations, organizations are often sued when the victims have been returned and found out that their employer did not provide support to their family.
“That’s when lawyers start getting involved, and the same is across any incident where human life is impacted,” Hudson says. “Families need to be looked after and cared for.”
Reassessing Security
Once law enforcement has released the scene, the organization can then do an assessment of the physical damage to the property and the repairs needed to clean and fix it. This process will likely involve working with a contract service that can do crime scene cleaning and construction repairs.
Alongside this endeavor, Hudson says organizations might need to assess and then reinstall or add security measures to harden their site against a future attack. For instance, this could involve replacing access control turnstiles and front desk equipment after a shooting in the lobby of an office building.
Organizational leaders also must assess if the act of violence was carried out due to a significant shortcoming in security procedures. If so, that gap will need to be filled before the organization considers reopening and bringing staff back to an environment that is and feels safe. Security leaders should be cautious, however, about unnecessarily fortifying their organizations after an incident.
“Do you turn your office space into Fort Knox and surround it with armed guards, bulletproof glass, airlock systems, and the like?” Hudson says. “That can sometimes have a negative impact on staff. It might make them feel less safe.”
Instead, Hudson recommends moving through this assessment in a sympathetic way to fix or install equipment that meets the needs of the organization. Then communicate clearly to staff about the new measures being taken. Bringing in an outside team to conduct a review that Hudson calls “return on experience,” instead of lessons learned, to keep this process neutral.
“Find an appropriate consultancy that can conduct a completely non-biased review of the incident, including the return on experience that helps them fine tune their contingency planning for the future and refine any training that might be required,” Hudson adds.
This team would come in and review the actions of the crisis management team, conduct interviews, and listen to how people acted and their perceptions of what went well and what did not.
“It’s also looking at how the incident occurred in the first instance and being truthful with how it occurred, so that if there is lability—and we are in a litigious world where everyone gets sued—well it’s better to take charge of that and demonstrate and acknowledge that you’ve changed,” Hudson says.
A common theme throughout the recovery process is the importance of clear communication, especially if the office was closed in the immediate aftermath of the incident.
Concannon recommends repeatedly communicating how employees can access transitional support through employee assistance programs, methods to reach security personnel to express concerns, and how to keep communication channels open with their managers. This last point is imperative because managers are most employees’ first point of contact for any work-related issue.
If employees ask questions that leadership does not have the answers to, she adds that it is important to say they do not know at this time. Becoming “cagey, mysterious, or defensive,” does not put people at ease, Concannon says.
“It makes everyone a little nervous—that there’s something being held back and that they need to be afraid,” Concannon says. “People are okay if you say, ‘I don’t know.’”
Communicating in this way will help people feel safer about coming back to work after an incident because it eliminates information gaps that make people feel unsafe, Concannon adds.
Another option for connecting with employees is to hold virtual town halls to share updates on the reopening process, introduce new security measures, and provide a forum for employees to ask questions. For larger companies, Hudson suggests that HR and the communications team work together to create an email pathway for employees to write out their specific concerns, which will be collected and then answered by leadership.
“You might not be able to fix all of them, but it gives you a good temperature check as well,” Hudson says.
He also recommends allowing employees to visit the office in small groups and see the changes made post-incident. Then, the organization can bring people back to the office where employees can interact with one another and share continuing concerns during the recovery process more directly, Hudson says.
Listen to Your Community
In April 2019, a student brought a rifle to Forest High School in Oceola, Florida, and opened fire into a classroom—seriously injuring another student before the school’s security resource officer apprehended the attacker.
Roughly 45 days later, Elizabeth Brown was brought in as the new principal at Forest High to help lead the school community through recovery. It was just her second year as a principal following 17 years of classroom experience. But she started with an approach she was familiar with: listening to her community and taking care of students.
“First and foremost is taking care of the students that were on campus that day—making sure that they have mental health counseling available for them,” Brown says. “Making sure that they have support. Making sure that they know that they are loved and cared for by their school leadership and their staff.”
Brown partnered with the sponsor of the Student Government Association to set up a voluntary meeting with elected student body leaders to talk. The students were asked to answer one question: What do you want Forest to look like moving forward?
One of the seniors said something that sticks with Brown six years later: “We want the world to know that this was just a day in our history, this is not our history. It was just a day,” she recalls him saying.
“I immediately felt the resilience, and the students wanted to be able to move past that,” she adds. “…When a shooting or a crisis of that magnitude happens on a school campus, students feel like they have no control…Very often, students will voice their feelings and emotions in a way that show that they want to take back control of their school and control of their educational experience because they feel like that control was ripped away.”
The students were also adamant that school spirit and student morale needed to be rebuilt. Forest High is the oldest high school in its district, and while respect for the past was there, the students felt like new traditions needed to be created.
With that mindset, Brown also sent a robocall for parents that her door was always open for them to come by to address their concerns. Many took her up on that offer, visiting her office to discuss school safety in the wake of the shooting. They expressed concerns about the lack of perimeter security measures around the campus at the time.
“We had some very real talks about the fact that the gates and the fencing were a deterrent to slow down an attack, but they won’t necessarily totally prohibit an attack,” Brown adds.
Brown also made it a priority to meet regularly with staff. She started hosting Bagels with Brown, providing breakfast and a chance to talk in a casual setting about whatever was on their minds.
The school secretary had shared with her the names of the teachers who were directly in the vicinity of the shooting. When those individuals attended Bagels with Brown, Brown made a point of asking direct questions: “What is going to make you feel safe? What are things that I can do to make sure that this trauma is not relived day after day? Are you ready to serve students? If you aren’t, how can I help you? Are you getting the support you need?”
The dialogue with teachers revealed that they were focused on having tools and support to teach kids in a positive atmosphere where fear is not present, Brown adds. To achieve that atmosphere—a goal of both students and teachers—they created a Joy Team led by a new Student Government Association sponsor to plan events and “out-of-the-box things” to help people find joy again.
“Our first pep rally that year, we raised the roof,” Brown says. “The kids were ready to have a good time, the kids were ready to laugh, they were ready to be loud, they were ready for athletics. They were ready to be back in their school and that particular situation needed to be in the past.”
Offer Support
After an incident, Brown says it’s important to have both mental health support for trauma and for grief available to those affected to access as they see fit.
“You may have a teacher that taught a predominant amount of the victims, and then a teacher that was in a totally different location on campus and did not teach any of the victims,” Brown explains. “Their trauma is going to be different. Their grief is going to be different.
“Having the opportunities for mental health supports according to their needs—their specific needs—is extremely important,” she adds. “It just shows a very accepting atmosphere, that there is no judgement…that we are all walking this journey together.”
One option is to offer critical incident stress management debriefings for people who were affected by the incident. Hudson says the debriefings his organization does for clients involve one-on-ones where individuals sit down, are asked to talk about the events that happened, how that made them feel, and how they were impacted by it.
“There is a process to this—it’s not just one interview,” he adds.
For instance, Hudson follows a rule of three, conducting an initial debriefing interview three days after the incident, a second debriefing three weeks later, and a third debriefing three months later.
“If you debrief immediately after, then they’re going to be shook up and traumatized—plain and simple,” he explains. “You need a little bit of time to pass.”
If at any time during the debriefing the interviewer recognizes that an individual might need additional support, they can then recommend additional counseling resources for that person to access. Some of these red flags would include people who have been unable to sleep after the incident for multiple days, recurring dreams, and hyper vigilance, Hudson adds.
Having the opportunities for mental health supports according to their needs—their specific needs—is extremely important.
The security team should undergo this same process, even if they have a background in the military and law enforcement.
“There are assumptions that [security staff] have been through this stuff before, they’ve handled it before, and therefore, you know, they’re solid,” Hudson says. “Like, ‘don’t worry about Dave, he’s had 20 years in the Marines. Nothing he hasn’t seen before.’ That’s just not true.”
Even members of the crisis management team who were not directly involved in the incident but will be essential to the recovery effort will likely need support, Hudson says.
“The people affected—maybe the casualties—might be known to them or they might be close colleagues of theirs,” Hudson explains. “Even though they’ve got to switch that off and manage through the incident at the time, it doesn’t mean that they won’t need to grieve and deal with this.
“Everyone from the company president, CEO, on down will need to do some self-reflection and then volunteer themselves to be assessed,” he continues. “Just don’t be shy in leading by example in some instances and saying, ‘Well, I’m going to go and get some counseling.’ Sometimes that’s what’s needed.”
Take Care of Yourself
When an incident happens, security practitioners often play a pivotal role in the response and the recovery process. It can be easy to forget that they also need support, Brown says.
“It also works against you when there is a tragedy because you internalize that very deeply,” Brown continues. “If you do not allow yourself grieving time, time to process, and time to work through the mental aspect of what you have witnessed and led your school through, then you are not able to serve as well as you are hoping that you are.”
Grief looks different for everyone. But there are general self-care strategies that can help individuals process and reduce grief over time, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
These strategies include seeking out social connectedness—both giving and receiving social support—to talk with people who bring comfort or who have experienced a similar situation. The center notes that it’s important to not automatically tell people who ask how you’re doing that you’re fine. Instead, be “clear and authentic when others reach out to you,” and share the times and ways you would like them to reach out to you, the center explains.
Additionally, the center recommends being patient with yourself and adjusting expectations about what you can accomplish each day because grief can be emotionally draining. It also suggests adjusting beliefs and thoughts that do not serve you, such as letting go of self-blame and anger, and focus on making meaning, gaining a broader view, and healing.
“One way to do this is to find ways to honor the loss,” the center explains. “Once the initial shock of the loss begins to decrease, many bereaved people pay tribute to their loved ones by creating some way to honor the person. They also find ways to help them feel connected to the person who has died. Engaging in these processes can give life continued meaning and allow you to live in a way that honors and reaffirms your relationship.”
Brown was not at Forest High the day of the shooting, so her focus could be more on the recovery efforts of her community instead of on herself.
“If a leader is on campus and they are walking side-by-side with their school community in the aftermath of an active shooter, they absolutely must also take care of their mental well-being and their family’s mental well-being,” she adds.
If you’re experiencing a mental health struggle, emotional distress, or just need someone to talk to, the International Association for Suicide Prevention provides a helpline assistant to connect you with a crisis helpline in your country. Access it here.
Megan Gates is senior editor at Security Management. Connect with her at [email protected] or on LinkedIn.
