Kaiser Permanente Shop Stewards Needed!

This month, we would like to focus on the second principle from Vistelar’s Conflict Management Workplace Violence Prevention Training on KP Learn, the importance of being alert and decisive. 

The second foundational principle, Be Alert and Decisive, refers specifically to situational awareness and preparedness.

Situational awareness is a state of alertness where you consciously use your eyes and other senses to scan your environment to assess safety risks. While you already do this in your personal life, sometimes it is easy to get accustomed to your surroundings and switch to autopilot, often missing key indicators of conflict or aggression. The core principle of Be Alert and Decisive includes situational awareness methods with the crucial addition of preparedness.

In addition to preparedness, use the below four steps to empower you to be conscious of your environment, aware and responsive to potential hazards, and confident in your plan to resolve the situation:

At Kaiser Permanente, we engage in respectful and courteous behavior to provide a safe and healthy environment. Most people we interact with also adhere to this social contract. Still, as representatives of Kaiser Permanente, we need to be watchful for Gateway Behaviors and Threat Indicators that signal an interaction is going awry. These include:

Gateway Behaviors:

• Sarcasm

• Cursing

• Shouting

• Name-calling

• Finger-pointing

• Threats

Threat Indicators:

• Threatening hand movements

• Aggressive posturing

• Invading your personal space

• Angry facial expressions

• Eyes don’t focus on one thing

• Excessively repeating statements

We encourage you to take Vistelar’s Conflict Management Workplace Violence Prevention Training program on KP Learn to learn more about ways to respond and not to react to conflicts. This highly recommended training represents a system of principles and tactics designed to help navigate the entire spectrum of human conflict, including principles of no-escalation, de-escalation, and crisis management.

Have you heard?

KP’s incident response system (KPIRS) conducted a system-wide learning last November, and it was deemed a success! Great work for those of you who participated! We will continue to focus on ensuring KPIRS users have the correct system access and will continue to offer training to maintain competency throughout 2023. 

Did you know?

You can catch up on previous Safe Secure Respectful messages on SharePoint.