As a survivor of domestic violence, I was lucky. My ex-husband bounced me off the walls of our home and stalked me like a wounded antelope for five years, but I survived. I'm grateful I didn't end up as a three-paragraph homicide notice in the back pages of my local newspaper. And with the help of a good surgeon, loyal friends, and the sort of radical evasive measures one associates with the federal Witness Protection Program, I managed to escape and create a new life.
But of all the bruises, injuries and other consequences - including having to move to another state, and change my name and every piece of personal ID - the greatest price I paid was having to reinvent myself by changing my occupation and spending years struggling to become effective in an entirely new field. And I wasn't the only victim: My employer, a great company, lost someone with years of regional experience. And no amount of insurance was able to compensate the company for the revenue lost or the time it took to train a new employee.
I see now that when women are battered (or worse) by husbands or boyfriends, the companies they work for are also profoundly affected. In fact, if you manage or own a company, you'd probably be interested in knowing that last year alone the nation's businesses - from the smallest mom-and-pop operation to the largest Fortune 500 company - lost nearly $6 billion in lost productivity (a billion more than the previous year) because of partner violence. And that doesn't begin to account for a woman's pain and suffering.
I've spent the last two years interviewing survivors of domestic violence (DV) and speaking to business audiences throughout Washington about its impact on working women and the companies they work for. One fact is inescapable: Intimate partner violence - in Washington and elsewhere - is on the increase, and working women have never been more vulnerable. And even if a company operates with the utmost care, its reputation, its financial stability and its longevity can be in jeopardy because of one uninsurable risk ... the risk that someone there may turn out to be a victim, or a perpetrator, of domestic violence.
As I see it, the threat of DV in or outside the workplace has at least five separate dimensions: financial, legal, medical, psychological and ethical - any one of which could put a company (your company?) at risk. Here's how these five dimensions have recently played out with tragic consequences:
In Bellevue, a woman working at a major investment house was murdered by her husband. Her co-workers later found letters in her office desk describing the reign of terror. Not only did the victim's children lose their mom, but the company lost a valued employee and the productivity that occurs when employees grieve the murder of their friend and co-worker.
In Tacoma, the police chief there killed his wife and took his own life. The murder-suicide cost the city $12 million. Many safety-in-the-workplace laws and anti-discrimination laws are now being applied to intimate-partner violence cases. And even if an employer cannot be held criminally liable, a company may be held liable in a civil suit.
In Seattle, a DV survivor suffering multiple assaults by her ex was forced to quit several jobs because of harassment at her workplace by her ex-boyfriend. According to a Group Health study, company healthcare costs are significantly higher for women in violent relationships than women in nonviolent relationships.
In Bremerton, a woman's colleagues were so concerned at her unexplained absence from work that they alerted police. Officers found the bodies of the woman and her 12-year-old son, and later apprehended the husband, a man with a violent past.
And at a university campus in Western Washington, a young professor was murdered just because he was a co-worker of a woman who was being stalked. The mental and emotional cost of the crime on the victim's colleagues and the student body cannot be underestimated.
As an employer or manager of a business (or their attorney), you need to acknowledge that DV is no longer "a private matter," and that a victim - or even a perpetrator - may be walking through the doors of your company and subtly affecting your business on a daily basis.
The fact that you are reading this is the first step toward protecting your or your client's company and employees. But you would do well to follow up by having management and the HR staff professionally educated about the devastating impact of DV. They can then educate and help protect the company's greatest asset: its employees.
Under federal law, a company is legally responsible for sexual harassment training, and it can also be held legally and/or civilly responsible under safety in the workplace laws. Is your company safe from domestic violence?
