Survey seeks info about domestic violence's effect on workplace

Family violence affects more than just the family; it can also affect the workplace. As a result, Violence Free Families, a coalition of the Community Partnership of the Ozarks, is planning a survey to measure the effects of family violence on small business.

Sylvia Persky, associate director of Community Partnership of the Ozarks, said the effect of family violence on the workplace first came to her attention more than a year ago.

"We had a call from a small business that said their employees were being harassed, for the most part through cell phones, all day long. The abusers would give the victims a cell phone, then they would call them at work all day long and they couldn't concentrate on their jobs," Persky said.

Awareness of the problem for small businesses has been growing at the Community Partnership.

"We have had other calls from businesses who said, I have an employee I really want to keep, but her attendance is really bad because she has to keep going to the emergency room,'" Persky said.

Over the course of the past year and a half, Persky said, more calls to the partnership and to its member agencies encouraged Violence Free Families to develop a study to find out what was happening in Springfield.

Violence Free Families is an 8-year-old coalition, made up of about 60 members from the area whose purpose is to work together to prevent, reduce and treat family violence through the effective use of community resources. This study is one way members are trying to reach out to the business community.

"We are targeting small business to make them aware that this issue doesn't just end in the home but very often filters through business and costs employers a great deal of money," Persky said.

The study is available to anyone in the Springfield regional area. It consists of nine questions and can be taken in a short amount of time.

"We wanted to keep it so that somebody could literally take the survey in five minutes. It's simply a yes or no; I've heard of this, this has happened to me, no it hasn't and have I done anything about it," Persky said.

A copy of the confidential employer survey can be found at www.vff.us. Businesses can also call the partnership at 417-888-2020 to obtain a hard copy that can be faxed or mailed back.

Previous studies on this issue have been done in larger workplaces, but this is the first study in the area to be aimed at smaller businesses.

"We knew that it wasn't the big business (having trouble), because most of the larger businesses have human resource people and they very often have some sort of program in place to address these things. It is the little businesses that don't know what do with this issue," Persky said.

She added that the partnership is in the midst of creating a guide to help employers deal with the effect of domestic violence in the workplace. More information on this topic will be shared at the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce's, Good Morning Springfield! breakfast at 7:30 a.m. May 6. All small businesses are invited to attend, but registration is required. To register, contact Erin Russell at 417-862-5567 or register online at www.springfield chamber.com.