What are the warning signs of workplace violence?

Workplace violence is not only an extreme event. It is the culmination of earlier signals that were underestimated, rationalized, or lost inside weak processes. Early teams in particular are vulnerable because culture often depends on founder presence rather than clear structure. The fastest way to reduce risk is to treat safety as a design problem. That means defining what you are looking for, clarifying what to do when you see it, and making those steps repeatable without heroics.

Start with a precise definition. Workplace violence includes a wide range of behaviors that harm or threaten to harm people at work. Physical aggression sits at one end. Threats, stalking, harassment, coercion, property damage, and credible intimidation occupy the middle. Severe verbal abuse and persistent bullying that produces fear belong in the same continuum. Treat this as a spectrum of risk that can escalate without visible injury. If you only react to situations after a physical incident, you are reacting to the final step rather than the stages that lead to it.

Most founders ask for a list of behaviors to watch. Lists are easy to memorize but hard to apply under pressure. A better approach is a simple three layer map. Layer one is individual behavior that becomes increasingly volatile, targeted, or obsessive. Layer two is interpersonal dynamics that concentrate fear or hostility inside a team. Layer three is system failure that prevents concerns from surfacing or being handled. You need to be able to read all three.

At the individual layer, watch for boundary testing that escalates in intensity or focus. A person begins with intrusive comments, then moves into unwanted physical proximity, then ignores clear feedback. Boundary testing often pairs with grievance fixation. The person revisits the same perceived slight in one on one conversations, Slack threads, or late night emails, and the language hardens from frustration to blame to retribution. The target can be a manager, a peer, an HR process, or the company itself. When fixation pairs with personalization, the risk rises. The narrative shifts from this policy is unfair to you did this to me.

Another early individual sign is leakage. People rarely keep violent ideation sealed inside. They share hostile fantasies through dark humor, memes, song lyrics, or references to past incidents. They search for attention by floating a shocking comment, then dismiss concern as a joke. Leakage also appears as research into weapons or surveillance of a colleague. In a digital workplace, this can surface through browser history patterns on managed devices, repeated mentions of doxxing, or interest in tracking someone’s schedule. Train managers to hear content and pattern, not only tone. A calm voice can hide dangerous intent just as a heated voice can hide simple stress.

Domestic stress that spills into work is a sensitive but important area. Escalating partner conflict, restraining orders, or threats against an employee can follow them to the office or job site. The employee may feel shame and try to hide it. You need a confidential channel to capture these risks early and a practical plan that includes access control, front desk alerts, and predictable escort protocols. The warning sign is not always the person at risk. It can be the outsider who begins to appear or call or send messages that escalate to threats.

Substance misuse and sudden behavior swings are often present when violence escalates. The sign to watch is not a single instance of intoxication. It is the combination of impairment and grievance that produces disinhibition. The person who was already fixated on a slight now has fewer brakes. If the role includes access to sensitive spaces or equipment, treat this as a serious control problem, not a moral judgment.

At the interpersonal layer, look for patterns that concentrate fear in one corner of the team. Targets change behavior first. They avoid a colleague’s desk. They switch shifts. They volunteer for remote days that do not suit their home life. They stop asking questions in meetings. When multiple people adopt avoidance strategies around a single person, do not label it culture fit. Label it a risk that requires inquiry. The corollary pattern is the isolator. This person disrupts normal feedback loops by insisting that all communication goes through them, gatekeeping information, and punishing dissent with public humiliation or rumor. Isolation builds the conditions for retaliation because it makes targets feel trapped and unseen.

Language is useful in this layer. Teams under pressure will always argue. Healthy conflict stays on ideas and time frames. Unhealthy conflict slides into character labels and threat shapes. Watch for ultimatums, promises of harm veiled as operational consequences, or statements that track physical movement and personal life. When people begin to map each other’s routines and vulnerabilities, you should intervene. Treat this as a design issue for meetings, handoffs, and escalation paths, not as a personality clash to be ignored.

The third layer is system failure. This is the silent source of many avoidable incidents. You see it when reporting mechanisms are confusing or performative. People do not report because they assume nothing will happen or because they fear retaliation disguised as performance management. You see it when managers are never trained to document, triage, or escalate behavioral risk. You see it when visitor management is lax, when access cards are shared, when desks are open to anyone, or when contractors move freely without checks. System failure hides warning signs because the signs have no safe place to land.

With the three layers in mind, codify a simple response protocol. Start with observe, document, and time anchor. The human memory is unreliable during stress. Replace story fragments with short, dated notes that capture what was said or done and who was present. Encourage the same practice for anyone involved, not only managers. Next, separate evaluation from conversation. The first call is not a mediation. It is a basic risk triage. Ask whether there is an immediate threat, whether there has been explicit mention of harm, and whether the person has access to sensitive areas or vulnerable individuals. If any answer is yes, trigger your pre written steps without improvisation. Those steps include security involvement, HR notification, and if needed, contacting authorities. Nothing about that sequence should depend on a particular manager being in the office.

For cases without an immediate threat, move into structured inquiry. Speak with the reporter and the person of concern separately. Look for consistency, corroboration, and pattern. Offer access to employee assistance programs without presenting them as a punishment. Keep your language neutral and behavioral. You are not diagnosing. You are recording behavior and assessing the impact on safety and delivery. When facts are unclear, increase the frequency of check ins and tighten access controls temporarily. The aim is not to punish. It is to slow any potential escalation while you learn more.

Two operational designs reduce both risk and rumor. The first is a clear visitor and access control policy that everyone can use without friction. The second is a simple manager playbook for difficult conversations. The playbook should include language for naming the behavior, describing its impact, and stating the boundary. It should include what happens if the boundary is crossed again. Do not rely on charisma. Rely on sentences that any competent manager can deliver with respect and clarity.

Founders often ask when to exit an employee whose behavior triggers concern. The answer sits at the intersection of pattern, refusal to change, and credible threat. One angry day does not define a person. A steady line of intimidation, fixation, and boundary crossing after clear feedback does. Prepare for termination with safety in mind. Plan the meeting location, attendee roles, access changes, and the neutral phrasing you will use. Offer support resources while keeping the boundary firm. People remember how you treated them during exits. Dignity and clarity reduce the chance of retaliation.

If your company is hybrid or distributed, adjust the lens. The warning signs of workplace violence can appear on screens before they appear in rooms. Repeated late night messages that mix blame and humiliation, camera on demands used as pressure, and the use of personal accounts to bypass company channels create a private arena for coercion. Calendars, Slack groups, and project boards can be surveilled and weaponized through selective exclusion or public pile ons. Your response design should include digital reporting paths, moderation standards, and time zone aware escalation windows so that managers are not making heavy decisions at midnight.

Leaders set tone in small ways that compound. Model calm language. Model curiosity rather than rapid judgment. Model documentation. When you receive a concern, repeat what you heard, state the next step, and give a time by which you will follow up. If your people see you do this three times, they will believe that the system works. If they see you minimize severity or push it to HR without context, they will go quiet. Silence does not mean safety. It means signals are going elsewhere.

Teach two reflective questions that anyone can use. Who owns this and who believes they own it. What happens if I do not show up for two weeks. The first question exposes clarity gaps that allow harassment to hide between functions. The second reveals whether your safety posture depends on a single person. If the system slows down when one manager disappears, you do not have a system. You have a dependency. Violence prevention cannot depend on heroics.

The warning signs of workplace violence are not exotic. They are ordinary behaviors that harden into patterns because no one wanted to be the first to name them. Your job is not to turn managers into therapists or security experts. Your job is to make it easy to see, easy to say, and easy to act. Define the spectrum. Map the three layers. Train the simple protocol. Strengthen access and reporting by design, not by speech. Treat exits with dignity and planning. Then keep practicing calm follow through.

People do their best work when safety is predictable. Culture grows when boundaries are taught and enforced with care. If you build a team where concerns are heard early and handled with structure, you do more than prevent incidents. You give your people permission to focus on the work instead of the threat. That is not a soft benefit. It is the foundation of execution.

Culture is not what you hope people believe. Culture is what they do when pressure rises and no one is watching. Build the system that makes the right action the easiest action. That is how you turn warning signs into early course corrections instead of late breaking news.