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Mary Louise: This webinar will cover the roles and responsibilities of federal employees
in responding to domestic and *** violence in the workplace. It will provide an overview
of OPM's guidance to federal agencies and give an overview of the network of domestic
violence and *** assault services around the country.
Our program, the [indecipherable 0:00:21] program, along with our colleagues at the
Office on Violence Against Women and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention support
a vast network of domestic violence services across the country, from the national domestic
violence hotline, local domestic violence programs, national resource centers and state
domestic violence coalitions, including the national resource center on domestic violence,
who you will hear from later.
The staff of this national resource center has more than 30 years of experience helping
agencies, programs and communities improve their responses to the needs of individuals
and families impacted by intimate partner violence. We're very pleased to be sharing
their extensive expertise with you, as your agencies move forward in forming partnerships
with Domestic Violence Program. We hope that you find this webinar to be helpful with your
work going forward.
Now, I'd like to tell you about our first distinguished speaker, Ms. Lynn Rosenthal.
Lynn Rosenthal is the White House Advisor on Violence Against Women. In this capacity,
Lynn coordinates efforts across the Federal Government to respond to and prevent domestic
violence, dating violence, *** assault, and stalking.
Lynn works closely with Vice President Biden on the 1 is 2 Many Campaign, designed to raise
awareness about the high rates of dating violence and *** assault experienced by teens and
young women. She chairs the Federal Interagency Workgroup on Violence against Women, and represents
the Vice President on the White House Council of Women and Girls. Lynn?
Lynn Rosenthal: Thank you very much, Mary Louise, and many thanks to OPM and DOG and
HHF, and all the Federal agencies who've called in to this webinar. I just want to talk a
little bit about the big picture. Why we have a project in this area, what the President
intended when he saw in the presidential memorandum directing Federal agencies to develop these
policies.
Then, just to really encourage you all to take advantage of all the technical systems
resources that are available. This project is very much a part of our value and our goal,
as an administration and becoming a model employer. We know that domestic violence,
*** assault, and stalking affect victims, not only at home and in their community, but
also in the workplace.
Just to give you sort of the big-picture data points, many of these will be familiar to
you. One in three women will experience ***, stalking and/or physical violence by an intimate
partner at some time in their life. One in four women, and one in seven men, will experience
severe physical violence at some time in their life.
One in five women and one in 71 men have been *** in their lifetimes, and an estimated
one million rapes happen every year. You can see, and you all know, that this violence
is a significant problem in our society.
We also know that the violence affects people in the workplace. It can affect worker productivity.
There can also be a risk of violence in the workplace itself. We know that there are eight
million paid days of work lost as a result of domestic violence every year, at a cost
of more then eight billion a year in lost productivity and health care cost alone.
It's very much as a workplace issue. In fact, if we look at the private sector, in one study
of corporate securities directors, 94 percent of those ranked domestic violence as a high
security problem at their company.
I can tell you, when I first started at the White House three in a half years ago, within
the first couple of weeks, I received no less then five calls from victims of domestic violence,
who had tracked me down, who were federal employees, as were their abusive partners.
It was on our radar screen very early on in this administration.
I know sometimes when we talk about workplace violence, we think primarily about how victims
are affected, and that is right for that to be our primary focus. But we know that offenders
are present in our workplace, as well.
In fact, there was a study in Maine a number of years ago that showed that the work performance
of offenders suffered as a result of the behavior, the activities that they were conducting against
their partners. Many of them were using company resources to carry out this activity -- vehicles,
cell phones, and so on.
We see the effects of the violence in the workplace, not only from what victims are
experiencing, but also what offenders are experiencing. This is very much the backdrop.
Last year, the President signed this Presidential Memorandum. He directed federal agencies to
develop policies to assist victims of domestic violence in the federal workforce. You'll
hear more about the specific requirements in a bit.
This is what President Obama said, "It is the policy of the Federal Government to promote
the health and safety of its Employees by acting to prevent domestic violence within
the workplace, and by providing support and assistance to federal employees whose working
lives are affected by such violence."
The first steps that OPM was directed to take last year was to collect the policies that
already were in existent, and I really do want to give you all kudos for what you already
had in place. What we found is some agencies had addressed violence in their EAP protocols
and others in their security protocols, and so the intent of this is to bring this all
together into a comprehensive policy.
After OPM collected those protocols from the agencies, they then pulled together this federal
work group that involved a number of other agencies with expertise in this area to develop
the model policy that was then distributed to you all.
The Presidential Memorandum focused on domestic violence in the initial order, but it also
empowered OPM to consider whether further guidance was warranted with respect to ***
assault and stalking, and if so to issue such guidance. In OPM's work examining the issue,
they determined that indeed this policy should also cover *** assault and stalking. So
you see the more expansive policy in front of you today.
The model policy that OPM distributed to the agencies is rooted in best practices. I do
want to assure you that a lot of work was done on the front end to make sure that we
were going in the right direction. We examined states level policies, corporate policies,
pulled together a stakeholder group that involved experts in workplace violence, and also went
over those policies with the Federal Interagency Workgroup. A lot of focus and activity went
into the development of this policy.
I know that some of this can be complicated in practice, it's a lot of information, it's
a lot to consider but we very much want to see everybody stay on the deadlines that we
were directed to in the Presidential Memorandum. As you get into the details of the policy,
I really want to urge you all to take advantage of the technical assistance that OPM, and
the Department of Justice, and HHS can offer to you in the development of your agency's
specific policies.
I am going to stay on the line and be listening in on the rest of the call, but right now
I will turn it over to Jen Mason, who is the Deputy Chief of Staff at OPM.
Mary: Thank you, Lynn. This is Mary Louise, and I just want to thank you for your leadership
in addressing the domestic violence, *** assault, and stalking that may affect federal
employees in their workplaces.
Now, I would like to introduce Ms. Jen Mason. Jen serves as the Deputy Chief of Staff for
the Office of Personnel Management. Ms. Mason's primary responsibility includes overseeing
the Government-wide Veterans Employment Initiative. In addition, she's responsible for managing
the efforts of the Administration's Hiring Reform Initiative, which is aimed towards
improving the timeliness and effectiveness of the federal hiring process.
Ms. Mason is the OPM Representative on the White House Council on Women and Girls, whose
mission it is to provide a coordinated federal response to the challenges confronted by women
and girls. As a result, she has worked closely with the White House Office to prevent violence
against women and on this important issue of addressing domestic violence, *** assault,
and stalking in the federal workplace.
Ms. Mason?
Jen Mason: Thank you, Mary Louise. Good afternoon everyone, and again, welcome to our webinar
on Domestic Violence in the Federal Workplace.
I just want to direct you now to slide 3, which I think is showing up on your screen.
The President's Memorandum directed OPM to develop a Domestic Violence Guidance that
agencies can use to develop appropriate policies and procedures, and you've heard Lynn speak
a little bit to this earlier.
To make sure that our guidance incorporated the best practices and the best thinking available,
Director Berry formed an Interagency Working Group to help create the guidance, and as
Lynn stated, a lot of work, effort and time went into this over about eight or nine months,
we did.
As a result of this effort, this guidance was released on February 8. The agencies who
were involved and contributed to this guidance include The Department of Justice, Health
and Human Services, Labor, Defense, Homeland Security, and GSA. In addition to some other
input that we had from several other agencies who contacted us, contacting Director Berry
directly, saying that they wanted to be involved. We try to pull in from wherever possible.
We've divided the Interagency Working Group into four subgroups, which address the following
areas that were key to developing a comprehensive domestic policy. We had legal considerations
in disciplinary action. The second one was, employ assistance training and awareness,
the third one, building safety and security, and the fourth, telework and flexibility.
Just about all of the issues that came up fell into one of those four categories. We
found that those four categories worked very well to addressing many of the concerns that
many of you had, that you sent into us while we were developing the guidance.
We're going to move to slide four. Each of the four groups drafted a portion of the guidance
that addressed their specific area focus.
Then, we here at OPM then revise and merge these drafts to create the final guidance.
This was a huge, huge help because that was a really heavy lift. There's no way that we
could've put all this together on our own. Again, we really, really appreciate.
In addition, OPM along with Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women hosted
a key stakeholder meeting. This was definitely very crucial in the development of this guidance.
With Department of Justice, we held a meeting with representatives from state, nonprofit,
and private sector organizations, who are involved in domestic violence work. This approach
allowed us to kind of, hone in on some of the best practices and ideas, that many of
those organizations have been using over several years.
We were able to incorporate these into our final guidance. Taking into account some of
our rules and guidelines that we have here in the Federal Government, and working in
a way to tweak them so that they can fit into some of our rules and regulations.
We'll move to slide five. Now that we've issued the guidance, our hope is that those of you
who are responsible for developing internal agency policies will read and become familiar
with the components of the guidance.
I strongly urge you to read over it. It's good weekend reading, I think. [laughs] So,
if you have time, just take the time to read it through. I know, a lot of times, these
guidance and directives get issued, and sometimes we don't get through the whole thing, and
we ask questions that are, more than likely, answered within the guidance.
If you haven't already, create your own internal working group. We recommend that you do that
really soon. This will really help you, kind of get the ball rolling. I encourage you,
as we did, to pull in focus from around your agency. You'd be surprised at what kind of
input you can get from different departments within your agency, and what they have and
can bring to the table. This will definitely enhance your development process, as you draw
down on the expertise of those who can provide some valuable input. This is such an important
initiative, and we want you to get it right.
Of course, we do acknowledge that resources are an issue for most agencies, especially,
in this time that we're in, but if you're able to create a team that's responsible for
developing the policy, you will likely be able to create a comprehensive, robust product
in the end. This is ultimately your goal.
Some of you have already developed policies, some of you all have workplace policies, or
you have some policies that kind of touch on some of these areas. But, we here at OPM,
along with Department of Justice and HHS, will be here the entire process, to help guide
you along as much as we can. From the jump, DOJ was right there with us, [laughs] jumped
right in pond, and said, "We're here. Whatever you need."
They have a lot of the expertise there. Obviously, here at OPM, we can help you when it comes
to various policies, so together, I think we from a really good team, to help everyone.
If you have any questions, or concerns, or issues, please do not hesitate. Like Lynn
said, it's important that we stay on our time frame, and like I said, we're here to help
you. We want to do everything we can to get you through this process.
Many of you submitted a one paper or a full document early on in this process. Some of
you can help each other, so you're not limited to just working with us. You can also work
with other agencies and partner with your sister agencies. Some, for example, like DOJ,
is very far advanced and they're willing to work with some of the smaller agencies to
help bring them a long.
Again, thank you all, for your dedication to this important initiative. I hope that
you find the rest of the information we have lined up for you today valuable in helping
you move through this process.
With that, I will now turn it over to Hope Hanner-Bailey, one of our OPM leads in this
project, who will discuss the timeline for developing your policies. Hope?
Hope Hanner-Bailey: Hi, good afternoon everybody. I'm Hope, and right now, I'd like to go over
the expectations we have for agencies in terms of the timeline for policy submission. I'm
going to try to make this as clear as possible for you.
As we indicated a little earlier, OPM released the "Guidance for Establishing Agency Specific
Domestic Violence, *** Assault, and Stalking Policies" on February 8, 2013. Our hope is
that you have started the process of crafting your agency's own domestic violence policy,
at this point in time.
According to the presidential memorandum, agencies are expected to submit their domestic
violence policy to OPM 120 days after the release of OPM's guidance. Therefore, your
first deadline is on June 8th, 2013. I want to repeat this, since it's very important.
June 8th, 2013 is the deadline for agency policies to be submitted to OPM.
Now, you might be glancing at your calendar and realizing that June 8th is a Saturday.
Technically speaking, agencies have until Saturday, June 8th, but we're not encouraging
anyone to work on a Saturday. So, close of business Friday, June 7th is fine.
Once policies are submitted, the OPM Work, Life and Performance Culture team will review
the policies and provide agencies written feedback using an assessment form that OPM
and the Domestic Violence Interagency Working Group created together.
Now, there is a second deadline that we would like to bring to your attention. Deadline
number two is December 8th, 2013. This is 180 days from the initial submission of your
agency's domestic violence policy. Therefore, agencies will have from late summer to December
8th to incorporate OPM's written feedback into the final version of their domestic violence
policy.
We're going to move now onto slide seven. After agencies have submitted their final
version of their domestic violence policy, which, remember, is due by December 8th, OPM
will maintain a record of all agency-specific policies. This record will serve as a status
report, if you will. OPM will be responsible for providing a status report back to the
White House in December of 2013. Therefore, it is very important that your agency submits
their policy on time.
What are the expectations after December 8th? Our hope is that, at that point, agencies
will begin the implementation phase of their domestic violence, *** assault, and stalking
policy if they have not already. The implementation phase includes such crucial components as
a detailed communication plan, training for employees and managers, and possibly for others,
such as security personnel and other key elements of a policy rollout.
For example, some of these elements might include determining how your policy will be
implemented, determining your time frame, conducting an analysis of potential barriers
for implementation, or anticipating where there may be resistance in your agency, and
essentially getting that buy-in from the key players.
Now, at this point, I'm going to turn the talk over to my colleague, Alexis Adams. She
will begin on slide number eight.
Alexis Adams: Thank you, Hope. Good afternoon, everyone. We just wanted to spend a couple
of minutes providing a brief overview of the recently released government-wide guidance.
As was mentioned earlier, we hope that you've had a chance to take a look at the guidance
and start to become familiar with the components within it.
If you've had a chance to start looking at the guidance, you will have seen that toward
the beginning of the guidance, there is a section of critical definitions. These critical
definitions are very important, one, to increase the awareness of the reader or the user of
the guidance -- so as they're reading through the guidance, they will understand the terminology
that is used -- but also agencies may find that they want to incorporate many of the
same terms and definitions into their own policies, and we encourage you to do so. The
definitions are helpful in ensuring that there is a common understanding of these key terms
among readers of the guidance.
The guidance also provides a section on basic steps that should be considered when planning
for the policy development phase. Agencies should consider steps, such as forming a working
group, as was mentioned by Ms. Mason, that will be responsible for the development of
the policy.
Also, of great importance is considering how union participation will need to be addressed.
Creating a reporting procedure for domestic violence, *** assault, and stalking incidents
is another critical factor, and addressing the particular needs of employees with disabilities
is something that should be considered in advance of implementation.
These are just some of the examples of key steps that are discussed in the early portion
of the guidance.
Going on to the next slide, slide nine. As you heard in the introduction, the guidance
is really broken up into four main areas of attention. One is workplace flexibilities,
then disciplinary actions and legal considerations, third, training, awareness, and employee-assistance
programs, and last, building safety and security.
In terms of workplace flexibilities, various types of workplace flexibilities are available
to an employee, when the employee and/or the employee's family members are faced with a
domestic violence, *** assault, or stalking situation. To the greatest extent possible,
agencies should work in collaboration with the employee to provide leave and/or other
workplace flexibility options to help the employee remain safe and maintain a normal
work experience.
All possible leave options should be considered for an employee in this situation. Some of
the types of leave that are discussed in the guidance are annual leave, sick leave, leave
without pay, administrative leave, among other forms. The application of telework, flexible
work schedules, and compensatory time off are also covered in great detail.
It's also critical for agencies to consider disciplinary and legal considerations related
to both employees who are perpetrators and employees who are victims. These considerations
include, but may not be limited to, responses to perpetrators and victims, situations involving
employees that are in the same workplace, handling of contractors, and confidentiality
concerns. In-depth coverage of these issues can be found in the recently released guidance.
Moving on to the next slide, slide 10. In the training, awareness, and employee-assistance
programs section of the guidance, you will find that it is important that policies highlight
training, awareness, and employee-assistance program support. Both managers and employees
should be aware of the sources of support that exist in their agencies.
Some of the topics covered in this section are forms of support and assistance, information
that is particular to employee-assistance programs, and how to incorporate workplace
awareness and outreach into your agency's procedure and, of course, training considerations.
And last, building safety and security. This is something that is one everyone's mind.
We've already begin to receive some questions related to this issue and, of course, because
of what we are facing currently in our society, it is such a critical factor.
It is also an issue that we find is very agency specific. Therefore, the guidance reflects
the importance of this issue through the provision of detailed information. Important factors
such as forming strategic solutions that make sense for your particular agency, developing
a response team, computer technology concerns, and working with your local law enforcement
are some of the considerations covered in this section of the guidance.
Those are the major components of the guidance, and we hope that you will feel comfortable
with the guidance as you continue to read through it and become familiar with it. In
summary of this portion of our webinar, agencies should be working toward a comprehensive,
agency-specific policy at this time. Internal working groups should be appointed within
each agency.
The resource list that accompanies the guidance is available for your use and further assistance.
As we will talk about a little bit later, there will be two additional webinars that
will follow this one today that will provide more information for your use as you develop
you policies.
Thank you. At this time, we'll hand it back over to Mary Louise.
Mary: All right. Thanks, Alexis. Thank you, Jen and Hope for laying that out so clearly.
I also want to remind everyone on the line that we will have a question and answer session,
so either jot your questions down so you can pose them by phone, or you have the option
of typing them into the public chat. We'll address as many of those questions as we can,
so please think those through as you listen to these presentations.
We've talked about providing resources and support for you, people with expertise on
addressing domestic violence, *** assault, and stalking in the workplace, people who
can support your efforts.
One of those is Maya Raghu. She's an attorney at Futures Without Violence, and she leads
the work on Workplaces Respond to Domestic and *** Violence, the national resource
center. The resource center is a partnership of eight national organizations, led by Futures
Without Violence, and is funded by the Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women.
The resource center provides free information, resources, interactive tools, training, and
technical assistance to employers and unions to help them assist employees who are victims,
keep the workplace safe and productive, and understand relevant laws.
OVW has been an active partner in planning this webinar, as well as serving on OPM's
policy workgroup. OVW has also tasked the resource center with providing technical assistance
to federal agencies as they draft, revise, and implement their workplace violence policies.
Maya, I'm going to turn over the floor to you.
Maya Raghu: Great. Thanks so much, Mary Louise, and good afternoon, everyone.
We are on the slide that is entitled "OPM Webinar, Important Considerations for Policies."
Hopefully, everyone can see that. Now that you've heard about the process in more detail
from OPM, I'm going to spend a little bit of time highlighting some specific issues
with the guidance and provide you with a framework that hopefully you'll find helpful as you're
working through the process of putting together the policies and thinking about the important
issues, as sort of underlying philosophy behind it.
Before I start, we're going to pause for a moment and get some information from you.
I'm going to ask you a question about addressing violence in your workplace. If you look on
the left-hand side of your screen, there's a box called Feedback. It's just above the
Chat box, and you're going to see a question that's going to launch in a minute with some
responses that you can click on.
The polling question is, "Have you ever assisted an employee with addressing workplace issues
that arose from their experience with domestic violence, *** violence, and/or stalking?"
The answer choices are "Yes," "No," or "Prefer not to answer."
When we say "workplace issues," we mean things such as employees who need time off to address
the violence, whether they're a victim or a perpetrator. Maybe they need workplace flexibilities.
Maybe they need accommodations if they have disabilities. Or perhaps they need certain
safety measures to be taken in the workplace.
We'll take a minute and let everyone respond.
[silence 0:30:52-0:31:11]
Maya: I am looking in the
feedback window and the chat, so I can see people's answers.
It seems like for most people there are slightly more people for whom they haven't had aggressive
issue, but there's also a fairly large proportion of you that have which is good because that
gives us a sense of all of your experience in addressing this issue.
It also will help us as we go through today and make sure everyone is starting from the
same level of knowledge and the same level of understanding that OPM would like all of
you to have as you think about putting these policies together.
I'm going to go to the next slide. I want to spend a few minutes, again, it can help
us all make sure we're on the same page, talking about what does the workplace impact of violence
mean as it's addressed in the guidance and what do we mean when say domestic violence,
*** violence, and stalking.
In thinking about what workplace impact mean, let's look to what the guidance have to say.
The guidance defines workplace related incidents of domestic violence, *** assault, and
stalking to occur three types of incidents, you can say. Things that occur in the workplace,
acts that occur outside the workplace but that have an impact on the workplace, and
trauma related to a past violent situation that is causing a negative impact on the workplace.
In the next slide, I just want to give you a few examples about what this means. If we
say something that's happening at the workplace, this is what we know and often think about,
this is when a perpetrator might appear in the workplace or if they're stalking an employee
in the workplace. There may be a violent incident, or the perpetrator may issue a threat in the
workplace.
Flip side of that is that you may have an employee who's the perpetrator and who is
using work time and work resources, like the phone or the email, to make threats or to
harass someone. That is considered at the workplace.
The other type of incident we're talking about is when something is happening somewhere else.
Maybe it's happening at someone's home. Maybe it's happening in another public place. Maybe
it happened at a different point in time far away from now, but for whatever reason, it
is affecting that person's ability to function on the workplace.
For example, the person is missing work for any number of reasons. Maybe they need time
off to go to court or to address physical or mental health issues. Both victims and
perpetrators may have performance issues as a result of the violence, and coworkers knew
well if they've witnessed something. It can include trauma from a previous incident that
had been triggered by something recently and is now affecting someone's ability to function
at the workplace.
Next, I'm going to talk briefly about the three different types of violence. As Jen
mentioned, the guidance asks that your policy address domestic violence, *** assault,
and stalking. These three forms of violence are unique, and there are important differences
in the way they manifest and at the way they affect survivors. However, they also share
many common characteristics, and they frequently co-occur.
An example is that a perpetrator of *** assault may stalk their victim before actually
committing the assault, and they stalk them afterwards as well. Many times the workplace
is a convenient location because the perpetrator knows that the victim will be there at a particular
time everyday and at a particular place where they know where to find them. Another example
is that a domestic violence perpetrator may sexually assault their intended victim as
a means of exerting that power and control over them.
I very briefly want to highlight some particular points about these different forms of violence.
When we're talking about domestic violence...I'm not going to going to an explanation at this
time because of time consideration, but I will say that the National Resource Center
on Domestic Violence has developed a wonderful online e-learning tool, and the link to that
tool is going to be at the end of this presentation. I encourage you all to use that tool to explore
the dynamics of domestic violence and get a better understanding of it.
The two points I wanted to make is one, I think, when we think of domestic violence,
we tend to think about it being between intimate partners, people who are in a relationship,
current or former spouses, people who have a child in common.
But let's not forget that domestic violence can also occur between family members -- parent
and child, or more importantly, adult children and elderly parents. That again goes to the
issue of who is the victim and who is the perpetrator. We need to look beyond the obvious
or what we stereotypically think of as victims and perpetrators.
Here today, I wanted to highlight is again we tend to think of domestic violence as being
a lot about physical abuse, punching, kicking, hitting, and there've been physical signs
of abuse. But domestic violence also involves a lot of emotional and psychological abuse
which may not have any obvious physical signs or manifestations.
Abusers may use a lot of humiliation or do tactics to degrade the victims as a way of
controlling them. They may control them through threat to harm them, their family members,
their friends, their property. They may empty someone's bank account or ruin their credit,
destroy their car, so they can't get to work and cut off all their workloads. There are
a lot of different types of behavior going around, and as you put your policy together,
just keep that in mind that there may be different ways in which this manifest and affect victims.
The next thing I wanted to talk about was *** violence. Very briefly again, I wanted
to highlight that perpetrators are frequently known to victims of *** abuse. I know we
all tend to think of a lot of *** assault as stranger *** assault, but that's actually
a very, very small proportion.
More than 70 percent of victims of *** assault knew their perpetrators in some way.
Again, they could be intimate partner or family members. They could be acquaintances. They
could be coworkers. They could be clients. That's important to keep in mind in thinking
about how this can affect the workplace.
The next slide is about stalking. I just wanted to highlight the types of behaviors that frequently
manifest or impact the workplace. Stalking is actually one of the most common forms of
violence in the workplace.
It can involve appearing at the person's home or work, or waiting for them in places in
order to make unwanted contact especially in the workplace, leaving unwanted items and
gifts, use of technology including work computers and work phones is especially common nowadays,
so harassing or threatening or keeping tabs on someone through Facebook or texting or
email and using work time and work computers to do that.
The other thing to keep in mind is that *** assault and domestic violence often have a
component of stalking as well, so when you think about addressing those issues and safety
issues and work issues, just be aware of that.
Now, let's very briefly think about who in the workplace is affected by violence. We're
going to go through this first four categories here. The reason I think this is important
is because all of these groups have some of the same concerns when it comes to the way
violence impact the workplace, but they also have sometimes conflicting needs or concerns.
Part of your job in putting together the policy is clearing out a way to address those concerns
and balance and reconcile them if you can, so that no one feels that they've been treated
unfairly, and that victims gets the support that they need, and perpetrators are held
accountable wherever possible.
Survivor employees workplace concerns, of course, includes safety. Again as I mentioned,
the workplace is an easy target for many perpetrators because they know the victim will be there
at a particular place and at a particular time.
Survivors are also very concerned about confidentiality. They don't want everyone in the workplace
to know what's going with them because they may feel ashamed. They may feel it's their
private business.
They're also concerned about keeping their job. Many survivors are afraid that if they
ask for help in the workplace or if they tell a supervisor that there may be a safety issue
that they're going to lose their job.
Survivors can often have issues with work performance as a result of the violence. Again,
they may be afraid to ask for support or assistance or think that they're not going to get it,
so they keep what's happening to them a secret.
Let's talk for a moment about perpetrator employees and how they affect the workplace.
As Lynn mentioned, perpetrators work performance is actually affected by their behavior. There
have been two studies on perpetrator behavior. One was from Maine about 10 years ago, and
one was done in Vermont last year.
They found a significant amount of perpetrators said that their own job performance was affected
by their behavior. A pretty significant portion of them almost cause or caused an accident
at work. Another large percentage of perpetrators in the Maine study were late or missed work
entirely because of their behavior, and a large proportion of them admitted to using
work resources to stalk someone or threaten them.
The fourth point on there I thought was really interesting because they found that in many
cases supervisors were aware of what the perpetrators were doing but failed to confront or admonish
them about it. This goes to an issue we'll talk about in a minute which is accountability,
and how important it is for prevention purposes for perpetrators to know that they can be
held accountable for their behavior, and that there will be consequences.
The next slide is citations and links to the studies that I just mentioned. The next [indecipherable
0:41:44] we'll talk about is employers. You're all in a position of being employers in the
context of putting together this policy. You're also concerned about safety. You're concerned
about liability, especially if there is some sort of violent incident in the workplace.
There are also cost issues associated with productivity, medical cost, providing accommodations
and flexibilities. But employers are also concerned with retaining good employees. If
you have an employee who's a survivor and their work performance is being affected,
it's in your interest to keep them and help them and make sure that they are safe and
able to do their job because it cost a lot of money to find a new employee, to train
them, to bring them up to speed, to reestablish contacts with vendors and clients.
So part of the philosophy behind this policy that you're putting together should be to
provide assistance where possible to help good employees stay safe and do their jobs.
Finally, their reputation with employees and clients. Coworkers talk. If a survivor isn't
given the support that they need or they lose their job, word gets around to coworkers.
If there's a violent incident in the workplace, that can affect perceptions of client and
vendors as well.
Finally, one of the highlights is coworker concerns. Again, you see safety is very important
to coworkers. If there's an incident in a workplace, coworkers may suffer trauma as
bystander or an observer. Coworkers who work with someone who's a victim, for example,
may feel like at some point they are being asked to take on more work in order to assist
the survivor. So you want to make sure that doesn't degenerate into resentment and conflict.
Many coworkers are not sure of whether they should help. They may see it as a private
situation or a personal issue, and they may not want to intrude. The person may be their
friend, and they may want to help, but they're not sure how to help. That is something that
you can address in the policy as well that I'll talk about in a minute.
[indecipherable 0:44:03] the next slide which is called prevention and response. What the
guidance does is it fests out the framework of things to incorporate into the policy in
how to go about putting the policy together. There's two really important points.
You'll notice that there are principles in the guidance that talk about responding to
violence or responding to victims who need assistance and responding to perpetrators.
But the other important point is about prevention. You want to stop these things from happening.
You don't want something bad to happen in the workplace. You don't want a victim to
be placed into danger or possibly move their job because of what's happening with them.
There are ways to go about doing that which is what is discussed in the guidance.
The next slide is prevention and response framework. These are the recommendations that
are in the guidance, and these are things that we use in our own project as well when
we speak to workplaces about addressing this issue.
First, to build a multidisciplinary response team. Second, to create a culture of support
for victims and accountability for perpetrators. Fourth, to make sure that there is education
and training for all the relevant people within the workplace on the policy and about this
culture change. Finally, creating partnership with community stakeholders.
This is what the guidance has to say about a multidisciplinary team. The guidance recommends
that you put together a team with representatives from human resources, from employee assistance,
from security. I know many of you on the webinar now are from other different divisions within
your agencies that have relevant expertise and information that you should be on the
team as well.
We also recommend possibly having a former victim employee on this team because that
employee can give you vary valuable insight into the kinds of things that victims need
or concerned about or would like to see in the workplace that could benefit others.
Another point that's in the guidance with regards to the multidisciplinary team is to
involve unions early, whether you have them on the team or whether you consult them separately,
but it's important for those of you who have unionized workforces.
The purpose of the team is to ensure that all the relevant actors understand their roles
and responsibilities that if there is an issue in the workplace, these people can come together,
and everyone knows what they're supposed to do. Or if you're going to work on a prevention
program, that everyone has a role to play and have the particular skills and expertise
to contribute.
Now, we're going to pause again, and we're going to do another poll question. Question
number two -- did your agency have a multidisciplinary team in place to coordinate the revision or
drafting of your domestic violence, *** violence, and stalking policy? Please select
one of the answer choices -- yes, no, or unsure or do not know.
We'll take a minute to let everyone respond. Please make sure you're responding in the
feedback box if you see it. You might see a little pie chart on
the left side.
[silence 0:47:33-0:47:57]
Maya: I see a lot of yeses and unsure or do not know, and a lot of no between the feedback
box and the public chat. It seems to be pretty evenly spread between all three of those choices.
Maybe after the webinar today, for those of you who aren't sure, you can go back to your
agency and find out if the team is in place or is in the process of being put together,
and for those of you who don't have one yet perhaps you can be the one to start that process.
The next element of the framework we wanted to talk about is changing workplace culture.
Information is the best tool. If you have an employee who is a victim or an employee
who's a perpetrator, you want to know what's happening. You don't want to get to the point
where there's some horrible incident in your workplace. That's not good for anyone.
The key to that is making sure there's a workplace culture where victims feel they can come forward
and seek support and assistance without fear of retaliation or retribution. You want victims
to feel like they can come to you and say, "You know what, I've been stalked by my ex-partner.
I'm really afraid that he or she is going to come to the workplace with a weapon because
they threatened it before."
Wouldn't you want to know that, so that you can take steps to intervene and keep everyone
safe? That's not going to happen if someone thinks their going to lose their job for coming
forward. Similarly, you want to create environment where perpetrators know that they're going
to be held accountable for their actions that there are consequences, including job consequences
for their behavior.
Finally, coworkers have an important role to play, not as bystanders, but as we like
to call it, up-standers, people who make a positive contribution or have a positive effect
on the situation.
In terms of changing workplace culture, at times, really takes a very strong view and
making sure that the policy and procedures you have in place are victim centered. That
means not just supporting and assisting victims who need assistance, but it means recognizing
that any action that you take respects the victim's autonomy, their assessment of the
danger. You're respecting their confidentiality and the right to privacy to the extent possible.
Obviously, there are some situations where you're going to have to tell people about
what's going on. Just make sure you're asking the victims consent before you do that and
letting them know because it can have some pretty serious safety consequences for them.
Autonomy means respecting the victim's choices about the way that they are addressing the
violence that's happening in their life. For example, there are really good reasons why
a survivor may not report an incident to the police, or they may not get an order of protection
because it might escalate the danger and incite the perpetrator.
So requiring an employee to obtain an order of protection as a condition in receiving
workplace assistance could actually significantly increase the danger to that person, so it's
best not to require them to do that but to sit down with them and talk through the options
and try to respect their choices.
Next slide is about accountability which we've already discussed. Accountability is really
a key element in prevention because we found from those studies that if supervisors had
said something to perpetrators about their behavior and said that they might be subject
to disciplinary action or even that they might be reported to law enforcement, a lot of perpetrators
said that they would have reconsidered their behavior.
The one thing that I want to flag here is to be very careful and think about and talk
to your security people about how to approach perpetrators and how to confront them when
you suspect that they're engaging in this type of behavior. There have been a lot of
workplace incidents lately and we don't want to create a violent situation.
Make sure that you're consulting with your safety and threat assessment experts, and
that there's a protocol for how to address these issues with perpetrators, to make sure
that everyone can save face.
With regards to accountability, as other people have mentioned, the guidance recommends that
you're very explicit in your policy, and you condemn criminal or violent behavior, and
make it very clear that such behavior has negative workplace consequences.
Then, you should be explicit about what those are, what kind of disciplinary action, including
termination of employment. The guidance goes into detail about what type of misconduct
is actionable or has consequences. It can be committed at work or it could be something
that's committed outside work, as long as there's a connection between work duties and
the misconduct.
In the next slide, we're talking about what coworkers can do in the workplace, and what
your policy can say about this. As I mentioned, up-standers is a term we like because bystanders
implies a sort of passivity, and that people are just observing. Coworkers can actually
make positive interventions in these situations. I want to make clear that we're not advocating
that coworkers should be social workers or experts in domestic violence.
We don't want them to counsel survivors about what they should do. We don't want coworkers
to be action heroes. We don't want them to try to disarm someone who has a weapon, unless
of course, they're already a trained law enforcement officer.
In the last 10 years, people have dissolved this very useful kind of protocol called recognize,
respond, refer, and how to approach a friend or coworker who seems to be going through
something difficult, perhaps violence, in a way that's nonjudgmental. It's, recognize
that something's wrong, respond to the person by saying, "Hey, I noticed you haven't been
yourself lately. Is there something I can do to help?"
Then if the person discloses that they're a victim of violence or a perpetrator, then
coworkers can just say, "There are people who can help. Here's the number for EAP,"
or some other resource and, "You want to talk to them."
I've included here a link for a resource on our website about how to get coworkers to
be up to standards and more actively involved in prevention.
With regards to protocols and policies that are in this framework that you're developing,
these are the things that are listed in the guidance.
For example, make sure you have a protocol for people to request work-place flexibilities
or accommodations. You want to make sure that you're maintaining the survivor's privacy
and confidentiality to the extent possible.
Be careful about documentation requests. Again, don't require someone to get an Order of Protection
in order to obtain a particular workplace flexibility. Don't require them to have a
police report. Think of other things that can satisfy your need for documentation but
not impose safety issues on the victim.
Again, how to respond to workplace issues or an incident. How to report and investigate
reports of violence in the workplace, or if an employee is a perpetrator, disciplinary
actions for both victims and perpetrators.
Think about how all these overlaps with other policies you may already have such as leave,
FMLA, *** harassment, discipline and things like that.
I know a lot of you have been asking in the comments and there's been some concern expressed
before the webinar about having a model or a template that agencies can work from. There
are very good reasons why OPM did not create one.
Office on Violence Against Women wanted us to mention that as part of the work of our
project, we created a tool to help private organizations and private workplaces and unions
come up with a policy for their workplace that addresses domestic and *** violence
and stalking.
It's on our website. You can find it. There's a link at the end of this presentation. Basically
what it does -- you can see here on the left side there is a numbered list of issues that
are covered in the policy -- the policy takes you through step by step, and it provides
suggested language.
I am going to move to the next slide that's also called Policy Creation tool. You'll see
an example of a particular section. There is promising practice language, which is what
we recommend. That's the most inclusive, or protective, for assistance to victims. There
is another one that is required by the law of a particular jurisdiction. If you think
it will be helpful, feel free to take a look at it.
I wanted to conclude by talking about a really important piece of this effort, and that is
community partnership. The guidance suggests many types of actors in the community that
you should reach out to and talk to, to form partnerships with as you're putting your policy
together. That includes federal-level law enforcement, the court system, health care
providers, and national, state, or domestic violence, *** assault and stalking service
providers.
To go into a little bit of detail, law enforcement can be really helpful in thinking about your
emergency response to an incident. Law enforcement can be helpful if you're dealing with a situation
in which there is an order of protection, which also covers your workplace and you need
help enforcing that.
Law enforcement can also be helpful when thinking through the issue of firearms in the workplace.
Many of you have workforces where people have to carry firearms as part of their jobs. How
do you deal with that when that person is also a perpetrator of domestic or *** violence?
The court system -- many victims and perpetrators are involved with the criminal justice system
and the civil system. It's useful to educate yourself about that process. So, if victims
need time off because they have to be a witness in court in a criminal proceeding, or they
have a child custody or divorce going on, you understand why this process is long, and
why someone might need a lot of time off.
Employers can also be really helpful in terms of providing assistance in the prosecution
of a perpetrator as well.
With regards to health care providers, if you have on-site providers, it's helpful to
talk to them and make sure that they know how to identify and what do if someone is
a survivor of *** assault or domestic violence and that they have the appropriate referrals
on hand.
With regards to insurance companies, you know that they are not allowed to discriminate
against people who are victims of domestic violence in the provision of health insurance.
Finally EAPs. They're a really important partner, as many of you know, in addressing this issue
and providing training to the workforce.
In regards to community partnerships with service providers, this is really important
because they are the people who are the experts on this issue. They are the ones who can help
survivors deal with their issues, obtain counseling, find safe housing.
They can be integrated into your referral network, again through your EAP or maybe through
HR. They can come into your workplace and help you do awareness-raising training or
presentations, and really be a resource for you.
They can assist people in the workplace who are victims with safety planning, so that
it includes the workplace in a way that does not jeopardize anyone's safety or productivity.
They can also help victim employees with providing documentation for leave or disability accommodations,
or other workplace changes or flexibilities.
How do you find them? You can reach out to the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence,
which provides customized TA training and networking. You can reach out to us at the
Workplace National Resource Center. We have a resource page on our website, as well, that
lists connections to a lot of domestic violence and state *** violence coalitions.
Now, I am going to turn it over to Kenya Fairley to discuss federal agency resources that are
available to help you.
Kenya Fairley: Thanks Maya, you did such a fantastic job, I thought you were going to
keep going [laughs] So thank you for passing it over.
Maya said this is Kenya Fairley Director for Programs with the National Resource Center
on Domestic Violence. We work with local domestic violence victims, service providers, state
coalitions as well as several different federal agencies, but primarily the Family Violence
Prevention and Services Program, of the US department of Health and Human services.
We do provide very specialized technical assistance to anyone that reaches out to us to learn
more about domestic violence and how it intersects with a variety of issues.
We are always available to help and look forward to hearing from anyone who needs additional
research, resources, or referrals, then we can help make sure that happens.
Some of the relevant federal agencies that also address violence against women issues
-- as you can here on the slide in front of you -- one of the very first ones is the Department
of Human Services' Family Violence Prevention and Services Program, which helps to fund
over 2,000 domestic violence shelter programs all across the country, as well as the state
and territory coalitions, that also help organize those programs within the state. They also
help fund several other special issue and culturally specific resource centers as well.
So if there's information that you may need that speaks specifically to a particular culture,
we have connections and the Family Violence Prevention and Services Program oversees the
work of the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American community. Casa D'Esperanza,
which speaks to and works within the Latino communities. The Asian/Pacific Islander Institute
on Domestic Violence, which covers a wide range of cultures within the API community.
There are also several special issue resource centers, which focus in on things such as
-- legislative issues, health care systems, child protection and custody. So, there are
a few different resources available for that as well, such as, the Battered Women's Justice
Project, the National Clearing House for Defense of Battered Women, the Research Center on
Child Protection and Custody. There's Futures Without Violence. Also, the fiscal office
helps to fund and oversee the work of the National Domestic Violence Hotline and the
Dating Abuse Helpline as well.
There's also a special issue resource center that focuses on mental health issues in the
intersection of domestic violence and trauma. That's a great resource that has many, many
materials available that can help you in your work with addressing this issue for your employees.
The Department of Justice has the Office on Violence Against Women and they do great and
amazing work there. Also, the CDC with the Centers for Disease Control, they have the
*** prevention and education program.
They focus a lot on prevention of violence against women issues, such as, ***, ***
assault and intimate partner violence.
Any of these resources we can help connect you with and look forward to speaking with
you to address any need that you may have related to that.
Maya, would you like to wrap up before we move to the question and answers, or are you
good to go?
May: Sure. To wrap up I'm just going to draw your attention to the last two slides, which
list a variety of helpful resources for all of you. One is a link to the OPM guidelines,
which was also pasted in to the chat. There's a link to the DDE learning module that I mentioned
earlier. That was developed by the National Resource Center.
There's contact information for the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, to the
Workplace [indecipherable 1:04:49] National Resource Center. Finally, on the last slide,
a link to two other programs that are also funded in part by the Office on Violence Against
Women. The National *** Violence Resource Center, which has excellent resources specific
to issues facing victims of *** violence, and the Stalking Resource Center, which similarly
focuses on issues of stalking, including stalking in the workplace.
I'll turn it over to Mary Louise and Jen Mason.
[silence]
Kenya: OK. Before we pass it over to Mary Louise and Jen, I think we're going to open
the line up for questions from our participants. We have about 15 minutes, I believe, that
we can do questions.
Mary: OK. Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question,
press *1 on your phone and record your name clearly when prompted.
Kenya: OK. As we're waiting for people to ask their questions, there are two...Actually
I did see another question that came in to the public chat. The first question for our
presenters is "How come OPM always directs agencies to develop their own agency specific
policy?"
I think this person is saying that they feel like standardization is key, and that not
every new function needs to tailored to each individual agency. The overall question is
"Why not create one policy that applies across the board?"
Can someone please respond to that.
Jen: I'll just take a stab at that.
Mary: I'm sorry, can you repeat your name?
Jen: I'm sorry. This is Jen Mason. One of the things as a work group we try to keep
in mind is that it's not a one size fits all. We try to make the guidance as clear and concise
as possible, but also to allow some flexibility because we realize that an agency with 30,000
people is very different from an agency with 3,000 and we wanted to give agencies an opportunity
to develop their policies specific to their agency.
If you want more specific guidance and you want more specific direction we're happy to
give that to you, but it's really, really important that you take in to consideration
the uniqueness of your specific agency. There's some agencies that have very small offices
here in DC, but may have very large populations on the West Coast. Then there's some that
have smaller offices that are using outside security companies, or using private space,
so there's really not a way that we could say "Well this is what you do in this situation,"
because everyone is so very different.
Having all the agencies that we had at the table really gave us a good sense that we
need to give agencies a little bit of freedom and ability to have their own kind of creative
development in this process. I hope that helps.
Mary: Great. While we have you there, I'm actually going to skip around a little bit
because I think this question is related to what you're talking about.
It says "Does OPM require a specific domestic violence, *** assault, and stalking policy,
or can these elements be captured in one over arching policy such as, workplace violence,
or EAP, or security?"
Lynn: Thanks [indecipherable 1:08:44] . We have received that question quite a bit. That's
a good one.
Several agencies are considering embedding their coverage of domestic violence, ***
assault and stalking in a larger workplace violence policy. That's certainly something
that we would like to remain open to if agencies would like to take that approach. We think
that it certainly could make sense for an agency to do it that way.
If agencies decide to go in that direction, however, they do need to keep in mind that
they still have to submit something for OPM to review by June 8th. Whatever they submit,
it should reflect the components that we've outlined in the government-wide guidance.
If they decide to go in the direction of crafting a sub-section in a larger workplace violence
policy, that sub-section should still reflect the components that we feel are critical for
the coverage of domestic violence, *** assault and stalking.
What they submit to OPM by June 8th should be enough information for OPM to see that
they have addressed all the components in the guidance. Certainly, that's up to the
agency to decide if they want to go in that direction. That's fine with OPM as long as
they're sure that they have covered all the critical components that are covered in the
guidance.
Mary: This question is also related to timelines. It says, "On timelines, are union negotiations
expected to occur after OPM approval?"
Lynn: That's something that's going to vary across state agencies. It's certainly possible.
That leads back to our encouragement that agencies pull unions in as early as possible.
We would all say that maybe that should be something that they would not wait on until
after they've already crafted their final policy. While they're in the development phase
they should probably have union representatives be aware, at least, of what is going into
their policy development. That's something that's going to vary across agencies.
Mary: Great. I'm going to give you a little bit of a break. Let me jump over to Maya.
There's a question that says, "Can you address the role of the DVRT? Who should have the
responsibility of leading the DVRT?"
Maya: The DVRT I'm assuming means the Domestic Violence Response Team?
Mary: Yes, that's what I think it means as well.
Maya: That's a good question and that depends on the agency, the size of the agency and
it's resources. Not every agency is necessarily going to have resources to have access to
someone for maybe all the divisions that I was mentioning. I'm thinking about the multi-disciplinary
team. It really depends on your workplace.
Generally, it's probably not a good idea to make it the full responsibility of security
or EAP, because in a lot of agencies, especially EAP is maybe contracted out. It's best to
have someone within the agency to have someone be the lead or response person.
You may find in your agency it makes sense for the HR function-type person to handle
that. Maybe it is security in your workplace because they are well acquainted with these
issues.
They understand the subtleties and sensitivities when it comes to addressing domestic and ***
violence and stalking. As opposed to other types of workplace violence, which may involve
weapons and people who are not in some sort of family or other type of more personalized
relationship. I don't know if OPM has anything to add to that.
Lynn: You've covered it very well, Maya. That's what we would say as well.
Mary: Great. Jen, I am going to come back over to you. I am going to combine a couple
of questions. It seems like there are some questions related to developing training for
supervisors and managers, possibly something similar to telework.gov. The other question
I'm looping in with this one is, "Whether there will be a separate training for employees
or for managers?"
Jen: What we're doing is in addition to this webinar we will have two additional webinars
that will follow. The next one, I believe is in April and the following one is in May.
I think I know what one of the topics is. In any event, what we try to do is have those
webinars focus on those areas that we've received the most questions on.
One of them is security and the other is, I forget what the May webinar is but they'll
find it for me in for a moment. Those are the only two options that we have for folks
to gather more information in the development of their policies. We won't be doing any individual
manager training or anything like that. That does take quite a bit of resources. [laughs]
Unfortunately, we don't have that.
However, if you feel like you need something a little more stream-lined or specialized,
we're happy to have a conference call and have folks call in and field questions at
any time. Don't hesitate because we don't have specific manager training. Don't be reluctant
to reach out to us. We're happy to do that and give you whatever that you need.
I promise you that 75 to, I would venture to even go as high as 85 percent of the questions
that you'll have on how to handle and how to develop is going to be in your guidance.
If you start there that may really give you a big leap forward. You may be further along
than you think you are.
Maya: Jen, if I could chime in on that also. If you're thinking about training to provide
for your employees, please use the resource list that we provided for you. Take a look
at some of the organizations that we've included on the resource list.
You may be able to provide pre-existing training there or at least information that will get
you started down the road of deciding what kind of training is appropriate for your employee
population.
Mary: Excellent. I have a couple more questions. I am not sure if there are any questions that
are holding on the line that we should go to.
Lynn: I do have one question. It comes from Hannah Shimcoe. Your line is open.
Ana Shimcoe: Hi, it's actually Ana not Hanna. My question is about the nexus from the ER
standpoint of view. How the heck do we prove a nexus when we have, for example, an outstanding
employee at work, someone who has excellent performance and so on, and somehow it just
came to our attention that there are happening things at home that shouldn't be happening?
Do any of you have experience in proving the nexus because in this case it's downright
impossible? How do we enforce the policy really?
Mary: Maya, is that something that you can address?
Maya: I think the nexus question is very specific to federal agencies. That might be something
for someone from OPM to address. Generally, if you're talking about someone who is a great
employee who's a perpetrator, is that the question?
Ana: Yes.
Maya: How to prove the nexus there? I think it depends on what you say and how explicit
you are in the policy that even if you're doing...How are you phrasing the fact that
misconduct away from work has consequences? What is the line in terms of what the nexus
is? There's some very specific case law about what that is.
That's why I think it's better for OPM to answer that question. It has to do with the
way you set the scene for employees, which is we want our employees to model good behavior
in the workplace and outside of the workplace. Then make sure about that you're clear about
what that connection is to people.
Jen: In addition, this is clearly a legal question, an issue of enforcement. There is
a component in the guidance on the nexus. You may want to take a look at that and that
can be helpful. You may end up having to talk to your internal and your general counsel
to help you sort through those issues as they relate to the nexus.
Mary: Great. That brings us to our next question which is related. It speaks to establishing
a standardized penalty for employee perpetrators.
This person is saying that they agree with protective mechanisms that could be unique
the facility but they feel like the penalty should be standard across the government.
I don't know if you all want to provide any additional response to that question.
Jen: With reference to the security piece, unfortunately we don't have anyone on the
line from that sub-committee. I ask if we can circle back with you on that question,
if you can provide us with your information we will try to get you an answer back.
It will not be something, obviously, that can be blanket for everyone. It definitely
will be specific to your agency and probably your agency's individual offices as well.
We found some folks that had to break it down based on location and region in their policies
to say, "Here we're doing this, here we're doing that." Sometimes it gets as specific
as that depending on the size of the agency. I would definitely encourage you to look at
the specifics that you have there.
Mary: We may have to wrap up, to turn from the questions at this point so we have time
for some wrap-up comments. I'd like to begin with Lynn Rosenthal. Lynn, are you still on
the line?
Lynn: Yes, Mary Louise, thank you. Very briefly, I wanted to note that this has been a lot
of information. I also wanted to say I know how busy all you are and appreciate that you
have taken this chunk of your day to be on this webinar.
I also know you that you already have a lot of issues on your plate, but if we get this
right, ultimately your job will be easier. Your managers and your supervisors will understand
what they're seeing in the workplace, how to help and how to make the workplace safer
for everybody. It's really worth putting in this front-end effort.
Actions that employers take in these cases can truly be life-saving. While you're digging
in and you've got so much to do, to keep a focus on that big picture goal I think would
be very important. Thank you so much for the time you've taken today.
Mary: Thanks Lynn for that important reminder. Now, I'd like to turn to Jen Mason for wrapping
up the webinar.
Jen: Thank you everyone for participating in the webinar today. As was mentioned earlier,
this was the first of three webinars that will take place that will discuss domestic
violence, *** assault and stalking in the federal workplace. The upcoming webinars will
take place in April and May.
More details will be coming shortly. We'll get those out to you as soon as possible.
They'll be close to the end of the month, just as this one was close to the end of March.
I hope that the information that was shared today and the upcoming information that will
be shared in the next two webinars is helpful to you and will help support everyone in crafting
effective policies. As Lynn said, getting this work done on the front-end is really
going to help long-term.
We look forward to receiving your draft policies by June 8th. We will work very hard to provide
additional feedback to help you finalize your policies and get them done within the timeline
that we described earlier.
We also have an email if you want to send questions or comments. I will give you that
email address. I'll give you a moment to get a pen or pencil. It is worklife@opm.gov.
If we didn't get to your questions today, some of them were typed in. We will have a
record of those. We'll do our best to circle back with you as long as we have an email
address. Some of you have our direct contact information here. Feel free to reach out to
any of us at any time.
Once again, thank you Lynn, for being on the call today. We really, really appreciate it.
Thank you everyone, all of our speakers today and everyone who participated. A special thanks
to HHS for putting this webinar together and DOJ for partnering with us on this important
initiative.