Canadian Safety Reporter

canadian SaFETY rEporTEr 7 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2014 picking up the pieces post-disaster Getting back to normal no easy task following fatal workplace attack | By liz foSter | JaymE pasiEka was on his way to work when he stopped at a military surplus store to buy two large knives. Shortly after arriving for his shift at a Loblaw warehouse in Edmonton on Feb. 28, Pasieka — who was wearing a bul- letproof vest — allegedly began a brutal stabbing rampage that left two dead and four injured. The 29-year-old Edmonton man is currently standing trial for several charges related to the incident. Mean- while, his co-workers — and employer — are forced to cope with the aftermath of the brutal attack. A violent incident in the workplace creates shockwaves on many different and complex levels, ac- cording to Glenn French, Toronto-based president of the Canadian Initiative on Workplace Violence. "There is an environmental impact, there's witness and bystander impact, and of course there's the impact on the individual (victim) — and the individu- al's family, for that matter," he said. "It's really complex. It's much sim- pler when you look at the individual target — the individual who's actually been assaulted… However, we tend to focus only on that individual target and we don't look at all the other people who were there as well." post-traumatic stress Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a major concern for victims and witness- es alike, said French. But it's not always a black-and-white diagnosis. "PTSD is not categorical all the time. It's dimensional, meaning that one can have various elements of the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder," he said. "Someone may not have the diagnosis, but may have elements of (PTSD)." Some of those elements might be quite striking, but others may not be so outwardly obvious, according to Han- nah Rockman, clinical supervisor at The Trauma Centre, based in Sharon, Ont. "Social withdrawl, inability to focus, making more mistakes, drinking, call- ing in sick much more often than usual, avoidance — sort of coming in, sitting in your corner, not going out for lunch with the people they usually go out for lunch with, like a social isolation — de- pression, panic attacks. But sometimes those are things you cannot see from the outside," she said. And it's important to be aware that those symptoms may not develop imme- diately, said French. "This kind of acute impact may not always happen at the time. For exam- ple, the individual might be the subject of an assault, and then comes back to work right away. And the impact doesn't hit them until a week later or two weeks later — and sometimes even longer," he said. A key thing to look for is changes in a worker's behaviour or personality, said Kevin Kelloway, Canada research chair in occupational health psychology at Saint Mary's University in Halifax. "People experiencing PTSD will of- ten go through very marked behavioural changes. (Maybe) they used to be really good and produce reports on time and now they seem sort of scattered, they're not getting stuff done. They may used to be really outgoing and now they're sort of withdrawn — things like that," he said. Often, employees will be afraid to return to work at all. "They have the feeling that nowhere is safe — even going to work," said Rock- man. "People start to feel out of control. The one place they thought they could do their job, they have a safe place… sud- denly, that place becomes somewhere that is in a sense a threat to them." what if? In French's experience, one of the most difficult aspects of the aftermath comes in the form of two little words: "What if?" — "A lot of questions come up in (people's) minds like 'What if I didn't do this? What if I didn't go to work that day?'" he said. "Quite often for victims in those cases, the flashbacks, the self-doubts come in: 'What if I had been there earlier? Could I have done something?' People often have great regrets because they could've done more but they didn't. So a lot of self-re- crimination happens for people." There's also the issue of assigning blame toward others for missing "warn- ing signs" that shouldn't have gone un- noticed. "With incidents like this — for in- stance, after the Edmonton tragedy that just happened — everyone comes out of the woodwork and says 'Well, there were signs,'" he said. "Quite often, in- dividuals… may start to blame others for not picking this up or not doing something earlier. So that's one thing that often gets overlooked, that causes tremendous difficulty." And for those who did notice warn- ing signs but failed to flag them, the trauma will likely be even more severe, said French. "There is a special class of individu- als who are bystanders (which is) those people who were aware that there was the potential for the assault," he said, citing the 1999 OC Transpo shooting in Ottawa that left five people dead, includ- ing the shooter, and two others injured. A co-worker had some insight to the shooter's plans but did not take it seri- ously. That co-worker committed suicide a few months later. "There can be a greater price to pay for those individuals who felt they could have done something more," he said. That's why it is so critical for employ- ers to review their procedures around workplace threats, said Kelloway. "It's almost like in the public schools around bomb threats: You just treat ev- ery one as if it's absolutely deadly seri- ous. You're going to overreact 99 times out of 100." tips for employers In the immediate aftermath, offering some form of debriefing to everyone who's been affected is crucial, said French. "That debrief is critically important. And even though people may say, 'I'm fine, I'm OK,' it's important that people understand what the organization is doing to mitigate any future risk. But it's also critically important to provide Continued on page 8

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