Why the Four Types Matter to Your Plan

The four types come from Cal/OSHA’s WVPP rule and trace back to the original NIOSH research on workplace violence. Every California employer covered by SB 553 has to do three things by type:

• Identify which types apply to your facility during the hazard assessment.
• Build hazard controls and training around each type that applies.
• Record the type for every entry in your violent incident log.

When we walk a facility for the first time, the type assessment is one of the first conversations. A manufacturing plant with no public access and a stable workforce is a different risk profile than a multi-location retailer with walk-in customers and a high-turnover staff. The plan has to reflect those differences, and the four types are how the regulation makes that explicit.

Type 1: Criminal Intent (Type 1 Workplace Violence)

Type 1 workplace violence is committed by someone with no legitimate relationship to the business or its employees. The intent is criminal: robbery, theft, trespassing, terrorism, or violence committed during the course of another crime.

Type 2: Customer, Client, or Visitor Violence

Type 2 violence is committed by someone who is a customer, client, patient, student, inmate, or any other person the business serves. The perpetrator has a legitimate reason to be at the workplace, but their behavior toward an employee becomes threatening or violent.

• Where we see it: This is the broadest category and the one most often underestimated. Public-facing retail, restaurants, property management offices with walk-in tenants, distribution warehouses that take customer pickups, medical and dental offices, social service agencies, transit operations, schools, and any facility with public access. Healthcare has its own separate Cal/OSHA standard, but every other Type 2 setting is covered under SB 553.
• What the plan has to address: De-escalation procedures, when and how to call for security or law enforcement, customer-facing area design (counter height, visibility, exit access), procedures for managing intoxicated or agitated visitors, and training on recognizing warning signs.

If your facility has any public access, Type 2 is almost certainly in your plan. We cover the specifics for retail and public-facing settings in our SB 553 guide for public-facing California facilities.

Type 3: Worker-on-Worker Violence

Type 3 violence is committed by a current or former employee against another employee, supervisor, or manager. This includes threats, harassment, intimidation, physical altercations, and post-termination violence.

The most common Type 3 gap we find on existing plans is a reporting channel that only goes through the direct supervisor. If the threatening conduct is from a supervisor, the channel does not work.

Type 4: Personal Relationship Violence

Type 4 violence is committed by someone with a personal relationship to an employee, where the perpetrator does not otherwise have a relationship with the business. The most common manifestation is domestic violence that follows an employee to work: an estranged partner or family member arriving at the workplace, calling repeatedly, stalking, or committing violence on the premises.

• Where we see it: Every facility. Type 4 is the one employers most often leave out of an in-house plan because the perpetrator is not associated with the business at all. The Cal/OSHA rule includes it because the workplace is where the violence happens and where the employer can put protective controls in place.
• What the plan has to address: A confidential reporting channel for employees who disclose a domestic violence concern, procedures for restricting access to a named individual (a critical link to SB 553’s restraining order provision), training for receptionists and front-line staff on how to handle a visitor asking for an employee, and coordination with law enforcement when a restraining order is in place.

This is also the category where the SB 553 employer-restraining-order provision lives. The law gives employers standing to seek a workplace restraining order when an employee is the target of credible workplace violence. This can be especially relevant in Type 4 situations, such as when a personal-relationship threat follows an employee into the workplace.

The Four Types at a Glance

How the Types Feed the Hazard Assessment

The hazard assessment in your written plan walks the four types one by one and answers two questions for each: does this type apply to our facility, and if so, what specific hazards exist and what controls are in place. A facility with no public access can document why Type 2 is low risk. A 24-hour fuel station cannot.

The hazard assessment is the section that has to be site-specific. A generic template can list the four types. Only a walkthrough of your actual facility can tell you which apply, where, and what controls match. For more on why that matters, see our breakdown of template vs. custom WVPPs.

How the Types Appear in the Log

Every entry on the violent incident log records the workplace violence type. That single field is what lets you, your employees, and Cal/OSHA see whether one type is generating most of your incidents and whether your controls are working. A log that shows repeat Type 2 incidents at the same customer counter is telling you the design or the training needs to change, not that the employee handled it wrong.

Building the Types Into a Compliant Plan

When CDMS develops a Workplace Violence Prevention Plan, our consultant walks your facility, identifies which of the four types apply, documents the site-specific hazards under each, and builds the controls and training around them. The hazard assessment is the section a Cal/OSHA inspector will read first, and it is the one a generic template cannot give you.