Situational Awareness in the Workplace

About the Program

Category: Risk and Emergency Management (Best in Category)

Year: 2023

“Situational Awareness in the Workplace” is a training program that was developed by Anne Arundel County Risk Management Safety to provide employees with the skill sets and tools to navigate difficult situations. The Risk Management Safety Team engaged the county’s Office of Law to assure legal compliance. Social isolation over the past few years has caused an increase in social anxiety, distrust of government, and aggression. According to the National Institute of Health, social anxiety disorders have increased by 25.6%. NIH believes it is unlikely that mental health will recover to pre-pandemic levels for some time and states that those with social anxiety can often express intense out of proportion responses through violent behavior, aggression, and novelty seeking. It was clear that a “front-line”, customer facing training was needed to assure that employees could identify potentially dangerous situations, understand the laws when dealing with the public, and have the ability to de-escalate a caustic interaction. Building upon our current training model for risk mitigation, including Psychological Safety and Emergency Action Planning, we developed Situational Awareness in the Workplace. This training provided employees with skills to maintain confidence in their capabilities to react to, and persevere through diffucult situations.