Implications of Family Violence for Work Place

For many family violence victims, their abusers prevent them from separating home and work life. Eventually, this can cause them to be less productive, miss days at work, and in many cases they have to quit their jobs. In some instances family violence homicides have taken place at work, and many organisations are aware about the significant costs to both the business and the employees of losing staff members as a result of family violence.

While there tends to be more awareness about the prevalence of family violence, some organisations believe that their employees are not affected, or that this is a personal matter for home. Family violence is still an extremely prevalent and insidious problem – that transcends age, class, ethnicity, area, and occupations. Having a responsive workplace where family violence can be talked about, and where people being harmed have an opportunity to learn about and recognise signs of unhealthy relationships can prevent further abuse and protect against the loss of productivity and/or added costs involved in on-going harm to employees.

Expert Support: Using Women’s Refuge Knowledge

Women’s Refuge is New Zealand’s largest provider of family violence services. We provide advice and consult to businesses wishing to update and improve their policies to incorporate proactive approaches to family violence. We can provide support, guidance, and expert knowledge to help your organisation develop these policies. We recognise that organisations working actively and effectively to support those experiencing family violence should be publicly acknowledged through a national endorsement based on criteria developed by Women’s Refuge. We value and acknowledge the contributions companies make to ensure the safety of victims by developing and implementing such policies. Finally, we can facilitate the development of relationships with either local Refuges or alternative service providers, to maximise the effectiveness of companies’ responses to people who being harmed or looking for support.

The Poster

“A stich in time saves nine”

As well as working at the coal face for family violence, Women’s Refuge is always actively working in the prevention space- both with perpetrators and with victims. Victims of family violence often say the same thing – “the signs were there all the time”. It is extremely important to recognize and remember that bruises are by no means the only way to determine whether or not someone is being abused. Indeed physical injury may well be one of the very last signs to publically emerge of violence at home. Few incidents of physical violence occur without a preceding pattern or history of ongoing emotional and/or psychological abuse. Very few relationships escalate to physical violence in short time frame, and many of the warning signs- often the psychological abuse- are overlooked, or excused by the abuser.

Drawing on these subtle signs, the campaign uses posters placed around the workplace to generate discussion among employees, and inform employs that their organisation is serious about supporting their people that are experiencing family violence.

The posters intend to direct employees that may be seeking more information or support available to a microsite, this sits either within the intranet, or as pages on the main website.

The Microsite

The microsite is a set of pages embedded either with an organisations website, or intranet or other digital space that can be accessed by staff.

The site is specifically tailored for business and organisations and contains 5 elements; information for people perpetrating violence, information for people experiencing violence, information for family and friends of victims, how to get help and support from service providers, and information on how the organisation can support their employees experiencing family violence.

The site also contains information on safety planning and the implications of protection orders.

The microsite is clear, attractive and easy to navigate, and is mobile and tablet responsive.  Although family violence is largely perpetrated by men, the language is non-gender specific and speaks to both women and men, as victims and as perpetrators.

Seeking help and support for family violence early will have better and positive outcomes for not only themselves and their whanau, but also as a valued staff member of their organisation.

Training and Accreditation

Although having a proactive family violence policy for staff members is likely to encourage direct and deliberate disclosures by both victims and perpetrators, this may not always be the case. Disclosures of victimization may occur in virtually any context and it is important to keep an open mind and have a good knowledge of how to respond effectively even if disclosures occur unexpectedly. As Aotearoa’s experts on family violence, we offer tailored training to organisations that want to respond to and properly support their employees that may be experiencing family violence.
A number of these programmes have been delivered to communities, businesses, non-government and government organisations that want to help prevent family violence, helping them to learn more about the dynamics of domestic violence, the change cycle women go through during this process, the safety of women and children who leave violent relationships, and how they can support people in their workplace experiencing this.

Family Violence Policy

We have worked with many organisations across Aotearoa to help develop measures that are catered specifically to their organisation. Whether it is a full policy, or smaller measures that are easily implemented in current policy; we can work with your organisation to help develop tailored policy for supporting staff that may be experiencing violence.

The Brand

Branding as an organisation that has endorsement from Women’s Refuge is only available to those that have demonstrated commitment, measured against a range of indicators, to preventing and addressing family violence in the workplace.
Acquiring this brand shows your clients, employees, other organisations and stakeholders, and policymakers that your organisations values the contribution of all workers and does not condone family violence or abuse. Further, it sends a clear signal that your company is prepared to be one of the few to proactively lead corporate New Zealand on one of our nation’s most topical and harmful issues by creating a place of refuge in the workplace.

Please contact Stacey@refuge.org.nz if your organization is interested in becoming a Responsive Workplace.