Episode 11 — “But What About…?” Your Questions About SafeWork Advantage, Answered

“It’s private” sounds respectful until the day an abusive partner is calling your front desk 40 times, waiting in your parking lot, or using the predictability of work to find someone.  I’m April Hardy, a survivor, advocate, and the founder of In Case I Murdered LLC, and I’m closing out this series by answering the most common questions HR teams, managers, and business owners ask about SafeWork Advantage, your company's response to domestic violence in the workplace.

In Bonus Episode 11, I answer the questions leaders ask starting with privacy and ending with practical prevention.  I break down the gaps most Employee Assistance Programs can’t fill, including how reactive support, reliance on self-disclosure, and generalist counseling can miss the employees who are in the most danger. 

From there, I lay out what Safe Work Advantage actually is: a confidential, self-paced “in-case I’m murdered” safety program that employees use privately, with whole-workforce access so no one has to raise their hand to get help. We cover what employees learn (warning signs, home security, protective orders, digital privacy, and personal safety planning), how rollout works without singling anyone out, and how this supports OSHA-aligned duty of care while reducing liability risk.

If you want a simple starting point, I share a free Workplace Preparedness Checklist to help you spot gaps fast.  You can find that here: https://resources.aprilhardy.com/workplace-domestic-violence-preparedness-checklist

Find current pricing, FAQ, and more for the SafeWork Advantage program at safeworkadvantage.com

Email April at outreach@safeworkadvantage.com

Subscribe, share this with a leader who needs it, and leave a review so more workplaces choose prevention before crisis!

Transcript

Domestic Violence As Workplace Hazard

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Safe Work Advantage Podcast, where we help HR professionals, managers, and business leaders create safer, more supportive workplaces for employees facing domestic violence. I'm April Hardy, survivor, advocate, and founder of In Case I Murdered LLC. And this show is where compassion meets compliance and safety meets strategy. This is episode 11. But what about your questions about Safe Work Advantage answered? If you've been with me for this whole series, you've heard me make the case that domestic violence isn't just a private, personal matter that stops at the door of the workplace. It walks in with your employee every morning. It's with them as they wait on tables. It comes along as they take care of patients. It sits in the corner of the classroom while they teach. And it can put other employees, customers, patients, and students at risk. Every time I talk about this, with a manager, an HR director, a business owner, the same handful of questions come up. Good questions, honest questions, the kind that deserve a real answer. So for the last episode of this series, that's what we're going to do. I want to address the two most common objections in people's minds first, and then I'll answer several more questions about Safe Work Advantage and what it actually looks like to do something about the domestic violence risk in your business. Let's get into it.

Objection 1 Privacy Vs Safety

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Objection one. This is private, it's really not our business. Or asked another way, what happens in someone's relationship is their personal life. If we start asking about it, aren't we overstepping? Isn't that intrusive? Maybe even a liability of its own? This question can come from a good place. You respect your people and you don't want to pry. So let me draw a clear line, because it's the line that matters. Supporting an employee is not the same as investigating their personal relationship. You are never going to knock on someone's door or interrogate them about their marriage or insert yourself into their personal choices. That's not the job, and you're right that it would be overstepping. But here's where it does become your business: the moment it affects safety at work. When a partner is calling the front desk 40 times a day, when someone is showing up in the parking lot, when an employee is so afraid or stressed that they can't focus, can't function, or they stop coming in at all. That's not a private matter. It's a workplace safety matter, and you have both a moral and in many states a legal responsibility to respond to it. And notice what support really means here. It isn't you prying into the details, it's making sure your people already have a confidential resource in their hands, so the help is there whether or not anyone ever says a word to you.

Why Predictable Work Creates Risk

SPEAKER_00 3:24

In March of 2024, Gabrielle Isaacs of Fairfax County, Virginia had an active protective order against her ex-boyfriend. In the parking lot of her workplace, he blocked her car so that she couldn't leave. She called 911 and was on the phone with a dispatcher when he shot her to death. And he knew when and where she would be because work is predictable. I don't know if she had let her employer know that she was in danger or not, but she could have easily seen and utilized help on a flyer in the break room. Objection two.

Objection 2 EAP Gaps

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Our EAP already covers this. We have an employee assistance program, you might say. Employees can call a hotline, get a few counseling sessions, get referrals. Isn't domestic violence already handled by that? I'm genuinely glad when an organization has an EAP. It's a real benefit and it helps people. This isn't about replacing your EAP. It's about understanding what an EAP is built to do and where the gaps are. There are three. An EAP is reactive by design. The counseling sessions are for after a crisis happens. They generally don't prevent crises, trauma, or death from happening. They respond to it. Safe Work Advantage, by contrast, is built to help prevent the tragedy from happening in the first place. It waits for someone to come forward or pick up the phone and ask for help. With domestic violence, shame, fear, the very real danger of being found out keeps people silent. The people most at risk are very often the least likely to raise their hand. So a resource that only works once someone speaks up is reaching the people who need it least urgently and missing the ones in the most danger. And third, EAPs are generalists. Stress, grief, finances, substance use, and yes, relationships. That breath is a strength, but it means most aren't equipped for the specific work of intimate partner violence safety planning. That's a specialized skill set, one that I have learned through personal experience and research. So the honest answer is your EAP is a piece of the puzzle, not the whole picture. It handles the person who is dealing with things that have already happened, is ready to ask for help, and who doesn't require the safety skills that Safe Work Advantage teaches.

What Safe Work Advantage Is

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Okay, so what exactly is Safe Work Advantage? A few of you have asked me to just lay it out plainly. So here it is. Safe Work Advantage is an in-case I'm murdered program that helps employees recognize, respond to, and stay safe from intimate partner violence, including homicide. It gives your whole team a confidential, self-paced safety resource. And it gives your organization a documented way to demonstrate its duty of care. To be clear, this program is for your employees. It trains the employee directly, not HR, not management. It's something you provide to your people and they use it privately, at their own pace, on whatever device they want.

What Employees Learn And Receive

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Quickfire round the questions I get most. Who is it for? It's for employers, HR teams, managers, and safety officers who want every employee protected. Whether or not anyone has disclosed a situation, and here's the heart of it. Because domestic violence follows people to work, and because the people most at risk are often the least likely to raise their hand, whole workforce access is what actually matters. Everyone has it. No one has to ask for it. What does the program cover? It walks employees through five practical areas. Identifying danger signs. The specific warning signs that a current or former partner is becoming dangerous, including the escalation patterns experts watch for. Home and personal security. Concrete steps to make their home, routines, and daily movements harder to track and safer. Legal safety tools. Understanding protective orders and the legal options available to them. Digital privacy. Shutting down the phone, account, and location tracking an abuser uses to keep tabs on someone. Personal safety planning. The single most important tool, built step by step so each employee leaves with one or more safety plans tailored to their own unique situation. The lessons are self-paced videos with on-screen text as well as audio. The trauma-informed survivor-created lessons come with a companion workbook and additional printable resources. How

Confidential Companywide Rollout

SPEAKER_00 9:30

do employees access it? And is it really confidential? You share one private access link in your normal internal channels, and employees create their own accounts and learn on their own. You can request aggregate engagement reporting, but never any personal information about who. It's confidential by design. How do we roll this out without singling anyone out? That's exactly what whole workforce access solves. Because everyone has it, no one is identified by using it. You share a single private link in your usual channels, email, intranet, onboarding, meetings, and post the display flyers in common areas. Employees use it quietly on any device. You offer it the way you'd offer any benefit, available to all, used privately by whoever needs it. Is

Compliance Cost Liability Questions

SPEAKER_00 10:32

this kind of training legally required? Generally, no. Few places mandate it outright. But OSHA's general duty clause expects employers to address recognized workplace hazards, and domestic violence that follows an employee to work is one of them. We dug deep into the legal side back in episode 10 if you want the full picture. Beyond compliance, this is really about safety, retention, and doing right by your people. Is it affordable for a whole company? It's one annual subscription that covers your entire workforce. For most teams, it works out to just a few dollars per employee per month for year-round access for everyone. The current pricing for each company size is laid out on the website, and the link is in the description. Won't getting involved open us up to more liability? It's the opposite. Doing nothing is the liability. Once a workplace knows about a credible threat, in action is what creates exposure. Having a confidential resource already in place and the duty of care documentation that comes with it is what protects both your people and your organization.

Checklist And Closing Takeaways

SPEAKER_00 11:54

If there's one thread running through every one of these questions, it's this. Caring about your people and protecting your business are not intention. They're the same move. The workplaces that get this right don't treat safety as a box to check. They build it into the culture quietly and consistently before anyone is in crisis. And you don't have to figure out where you stand alone. I've put together a short workplace preparedness checklist. In just a few minutes, it can help you see how ready your organization actually is to support an employee facing domestic violence and where your gaps might be. It's free, it's private, and it's the simplest place to start. You can grab the checklist and see current pricing for Safe Work Advantage at the links in the description. Go through the checklist, see where you land, and if it surfaces something you want help with, my email will be in the description too. This has been the final episode of our series on domestic violence as a workplace issue. Thank you for staying with me through all of it, for being the kind of leader who's willing to sit with hard questions instead of looking away. That willingness is exactly what makes a workplace safe and makes your employees want to stay. Until I see you again, please stay safe and help others do the same.