High-Risk Termination and Workplace Safety

Most separations are ordinary. A person is told, returns the laptop, says goodbye to two colleagues and leaves, and the building carries on. The cases that go wrong are rarely a surprise afterward: a threat was reported and logged, a supervisor described an escalation, a message was forwarded to human resources, or the employee held access that nobody had reconciled before the date was set. The record usually contains the warning before the meeting is booked.

That record is where our work starts. We read the reports, the correspondence and the performance file with human resources and counsel, identify what the person controls and what they know, and decide what the day requires. Sometimes the answer is a single officer in a lobby and a route agreed in advance. Sometimes it is a protective schedule at a residence that runs for weeks. The difference comes from the file, not from the seniority of the person being dismissed.

The posture is written down with its reasoning. If a claim, a regulatory inquiry or a protective order hearing follows, the question asked is what the employer knew, when they knew it and what they did about it. A documented assessment with a stated control answers that question in one page.

The first tier is a scheduled separation with no indicators: a lobby presence within sight of the room, a route agreed beforehand and a call at the end confirming the employee has left the property. The second tier is a separation with indicators, which covers most of the work. Direct threats, a recent escalation, a weapon reference, a restraining order, a history of workplace altercations or access that could be misused before it is revoked each move the plan toward presence on the floor, a supervisor on site and coverage through the following days.

The third tier follows a violent incident, a credible threat or a court order. That is protective work rather than a guard post: coverage at the worksite and the residence, a named officer, a written schedule with a review date, and a communications check at fixed intervals. It is staffed by officers who have done protective assignments, and it is priced honestly, because a detail that runs for three weeks is not a lobby shift that ran long.

The tier is reviewed when facts change, not at the end of the assignment. A new message, an appearance in the parking structure or a call to a former colleague moves the schedule up the same day and is reported to the client in writing.

Risk after a separation is usually not concentrated on the day. It sits in the week that follows, when the person has had time to think, has spoken to a lawyer or a friend and knows which entrance the receptionist does not watch. Coverage that ends when the meeting ends typically ends a day too early.

For the first three days we keep a presence proportionate to the tier: a lobby post through business hours, added rounds at open hours and after close, and the same officer each day so the front desk has one name to call. Coverage then thins to rounds and monitoring with a stated end date and a review. If the person contacts a colleague, appears at the property or sends something that reads as a threat, the schedule goes back up and the client hears it from us the same day.

The written record is built to be used. Dates, times, exact words, who was present and where it happened, recorded when it happened. An officer's contemporaneous note carries more weight in a protective order proceeding than a summary drafted two weeks later, and it is the part of the work that clients most often wish they had asked for earlier.

The general duty clause of the Occupational Safety and Health Act requires an employer to provide a workplace free from recognized hazards likely to cause death or serious physical harm, and a documented threat from a known employee is the example regulators cite most often. Several states go further: California requires most employers to keep a written workplace violence prevention plan, a violent incident log and training records, and New York, Washington and Oregon impose their own expectations in public employment and in healthcare, retail and late-night settings.

Those obligations do not replace a security plan. They are the frame the plan fits into: who assesses a report, who authorizes a protective presence, what gets logged and who signs it. We write procedures that produce the record the statute or the insurer will ask for, and we do not offer legal advice. Where a protective order is the right instrument, we work alongside counsel and produce notes in a form that supports the filing.