First Ever Canadian Study On Workplace Victimization Published

Statistics Canada has released the first-ever study measuring criminal victimization on the job.

Highlights:

• Nearly one-fifth of all incidents of violent victimization, including physical assault, sexual assault and robbery, occurred in the victim's workplace in 2004. This represents over 356,000 violent workplace incidents in Canada’s ten provinces.
• Workplace violence incidents were much more common in certain employment sectors. For example, 33% of workplace violence incidents involved a victim who worked in social assistance or health care services, 14% of incidents involved victims working in accommodation or food services and 11% of incidents were committed against those working in educational services.
• Physical assaults made up a higher proportion of all violent incidents in the workplace, representing 71% of all incidents of workplace violence. This compares to 57% of violent non-workplace incidents.
• Workplace violence was much more likely to come to the attention of police than violence outside the workplace, with 37% of workplace incidents being reported to the police compared to 17% of non-workplace incidents.
• Violent workplace incidents involving male victims were more likely than those involving female victims to come to the attention of the police (57% versus 20%).