19. Striving Towards a Violence ‘Free’ and Healthy Workplace: Insights from Canadian Natural Resource Industry Workers

This chapter critically examines what signals the prevalence of workplace violence in Canada’s Natural Resource Industry. This chapter also seeks to understand the consequences of workplace violence and explores the degree to which workplace violence can be stopped; and how employers can strive for violence-‘free’ and healthy workplace. A questionnaire survey, telephone interviews, and focus groups were used to focus on managers, union, and employees’ perceptions of their experiences and perceptions of workplace violence. Employees from across five different natural resource organisations completed three hundred and sixty-seven (367) questionnaire surveys that were analysed. Twenty (20) semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with each interview lasting 60–75 min, tape-recorded, and transcribed verbatim. Two focus groups were conducted: one with 15 managers only and the other with 10 union representatives. Each focus group lasted 45–60 min, tape-recorded, and transcribed verbatim. The findings reveal thirteen key themes emerged as salient to natural resource workers’ perspectives of workplace violence, prevalence of violence, consequences of violence, prevention of violence, and how employers can strive towards a violence-‘free’ and healthy workplace. These themes include the work environment, trust, relationships, generational differences, workplace stress, work-life conflict, employee well-being, leadership, mental health, job redesign, communication and collaboration, education and training, and violent prevention policies and activities. This research has relevance for workplace well-being, leadership, corporate social responsibility, governance, work-life balance, and overall organisational health and sustainability for practitioners and academics alike. The findings and insights from this research can be extrapolated to other organisations in British Columbia, Canada, and other parts of the world.