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Stories of workplace violence are all over these days, as the recent murders in Hawaii and Seattle show. The FBI considers violence in the workplace to be the number one growing homicide in the country. Why has violence in the workplace suddenly increased? Experts on violence are divided; some believe it to be a result of lax gun control laws, others blame childhood abuse, and still more claim the culprit is mental illness. While all these factors certainly play a part in at least some cases, the real reason for workplace violence is the increased amount of stress workers experience on the job and society's acceptance of violence as an approach to problem solving. Most offenders in workplace violence cases have a lot in common: they are overwhelmingly white males over the age of thirty five. This group in particular has a lot of stress, because of their age, race, and gender, they are often looked over for promotions. They are forced to compete with younger employees who have just been trained in the most current technologies. For many of these older employees, retaining a job is a lot like a treadmill: you have to do a lot of work just to stay in place. The situation doesn't show many signs of improving, either. Technology continues to advance at an alarming rate. Perhaps not surprisingly, many lose hope. Most perpetrators of workplace violence define themselves by their jobs, so the realization that they may not advance in their chosen field is very upsetting. If a person already suffers from depression, as many workplace gunmen do, this is disaterous. In a state of depression, it is hard to see that the situation will ever improve. So when something goes wrong in the life of a depressed, overstressed individual, they see it as the end of everything: job, career, and life. So sometimes the event that sets off a killer is something big, like a job layoff or a death, while other times the event is small, like a drop in the stock market or a bad performance review. The violence is focused at the workplace because that is generally the place where the killer has focused the brunt of his time and energy. In addition, a violent act in the workplace is not merely an act focused at a corporation. It is also an act attacking society, due to the fact that the workplace has traditionally been considered a safe place. The violence causes society to question how secure that environment really is, just as the killer questioned the security of his own existence. But why is it that employees chose to send a message to society in such a violent way? The reason behind this is that our society has been increasingly accepting of violence as a way of solving problems. Evidence of this is everywhere, from movies with violent themes like Fight Club to news stories on violence in schools. Constant exposure to these types of images can eventually bring the viewer to accept the violence as a viable solution. Since guns are the preferred method of problem solving in the media, they are also an increasing solution in the real world. Violence in the workplace will continue to rise as long as the factors of increased stress of employees and the view of society that violence is a way to solve problems remain intact. |