Of all the written programs California employers are expected to hold, the one most often missing entirely is the workplace violence prevention plan. It is also the newest, which is most of the explanation.
What applies to whom
Labor Code section 6401.9 took effect on 1 July 2024 and reaches general industry employers outside health care. Health care employers remain under 8 CCR section 3342, which came earlier and is more prescriptive. An employer with both a clinic and a warehouse can end up under both.
The four types
- Type 1 — the person has no legitimate business at the workplace
- Type 2 — a client, customer, patient or visitor
- Type 3 — a current or former employee, supervisor or manager
- Type 4 — someone with a personal relationship to an employee
The typology matters because the controls differ. Type 1 is answered with access control, cash handling procedure and lighting. Type 4 is answered with a threat-reporting route that an employee will actually use, and with a plan for a specific person on a specific day. A single generic paragraph does neither.
The records
Three retention periods sit inside this rule and they are not the same:
- A violent incident log — kept five years
- Hazard identification, evaluation and correction records — five years
- Training records — one year
The violent incident log is the requirement employers most often discover late. It is not the injury log and it is not the security report. Incidents are recorded whether or not anyone was hurt, with the detail the statute calls for, and the log is kept for five years.
Writing one that is worth having
Interview the people at the counter, on the night shift, and in the lone-worker roles before drafting anything. They will tell you within ten minutes where the risk actually is, and it is rarely where the org chart suggests. Then write the plan around those situations, name who is responsible, and train to it. A downloaded template with the company name typed in the header satisfies nobody, least of all an inspector reading it beside an incident report.
Michael Karl McNeil — environmental health and safety, industrial hygiene, emergency planning.
Michael Karl McNeil 