Originally published here.

Victims of  domestic violence who work for  corporate entities would preferably leave their domestic issues at home. In spite of anyone’s best intensions, domestic issues do not remain at home.  Employees’ domestic experiences are many and varied which are more often than not brought into the job context in workplaces in varying degrees. Domestic issues have crept into and  do affect  workplaces and  concerted attempts  have been  made to  address home-work issues in  the past (Ugwuzor, 2019).

Suffice it to say that none of those issues has been as apparently overwhelming as domestic violence.  Domestic violence  has been defined as all acts of physical, sexual, psychological or economic violence that occur within the family or domestic unit, irrespective of  biological or legal family ties, or between former  or current spouses or partners, whether or not the perpetrator shares or has shared the same residence as the  victim(Council  of Europe  convention, 2011).

The  impact   of  domestic violence  on the world of  work has been  globally recognized  ( ILO, 2019;  Pillinger, Schmidt and  Wintour, 2016). Domestic abuse, especially on female employees in Nigeria, is a criminal matter under assault in the Criminal Code in which the victims can bring a civil action under the tort of assault (Oni-Ojo, Adeniji, Osibanjo & Heirsmac (2014) In spite of the foregoing, domestic violence is  still  being treated as a private  family affair without  recourse to   any spillover consequences in the workplace .

There seems to be a vicious cycle of the reasons for the level of  levity  in which  cases  of  domestic violence  are  treated. On  one  angle  the victims  are reluctant to report the cases because they feel whoever they report to will not take the case seriously. On  the other  hand the  authorities being  reported to  take  the case  as acceptable norms and minor private matter not worth taking seriously. In firms, mangers may be unsure about how to address domestic abuse or reluctant to get involved in something they believe to be  an  employee’s  personal  problem.

When workers experience domestic  violence at  home, within an intimate relationship by an intimate partner, impacts are felt in the workplace with victims being bothered in some way by their abuser while at work (Wathen, MacGregor & MacQuarrie, 2015). Domestic violence can be perpetrated by and on any gender and victims could also be of any gender. However, reports show that women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence than men. (Eze-Anaba,2007, Kwanga, Enefu, Ikyernum, Ali & Makyur, 2021).

Victims may tend  to   want to  act smart  and compartmentalize  dimensions of  their home –work lives. In spite of this and apart from obvious physical signs in forms of bruises, fractures,  cuts  and  so  on,  the  victims  also  exhibit  signs  that  depict  emotional  and psychological destabilization. The need for financial security and the maintenance of desirable standard of living, amongst others, are lofty reasons for persons to take-up paid employment or go into private business ownership. Being in paid  employment, for  example,  gives victims  more  opportunities and capacity to manage violent relationships. However, victims of domestic violence, especially the  female victims,  tend  to be  more  likely to  be  late  to  and absent  from  work,  perform dismally as evidenced by poor work outcomes and tardiness, due to anxiety, tiredness, stress and so on that will attract more reprimands and other disciplinary issues that will culminate to increase in voluntary and involuntary turnover intensions. All of these situations will further deplete the financial status and ability of victims to surmount the challenging situation. The impact of domestic violence on workers’ physical and mental health is devastating. It could be expressed  as  emotional and  psychological distress,  suicide attempts  and,  in  its worst  case scenario,  resulting  in  loss  of  life. 

In  Nigeria,  the  statistical  data  on  workers  who  are experiencing domestic violence are shady with the Naira value of the impact in workplaces more  under-assumed  than  eventual  actual  quantification.  Also,  deliberate health  care  and social assistance and  workplace  policies to  cover victims  of domestic violence seem non-existent in public and  private firms in Nigeria. This situation is perhaps  because domestic violence in workplaces in Nigeria is one of the usually talked-about issues in hushed tones.

The victims would rather  not want to ‘expose private issues’  and the workplaces themselves are so  inundated by  other challenges that  such supposedly private matters are relegated to oblivion. However, the impacts of domestic violence are engraved in the minds of the victims who  in  trying to  go  about  their normal  work lives  exhibit some  abnormally dismal  work outcomes.

Violence and  harassment   are a range of  unacceptable behaviors  and  practices, or threats thereof, whether a single occurrence or  repeated, that aim at, result in or are likely to result in physical, psychological, sexual or economic harm and includes gender-based  violence and  harassment ILO (2019).This work contributes to the growing discourse on the implications of  domestic violence in workplaces and  aims at highlighting the travails of victims of domestic violence and  harassment while encouraging more victims  to speak-up.  Also the workplace implications  of  domestic  violence  and harassment  are  emphasized to  trigger  the decision direction of firms to urgently enact proactive workplace policies and practices to address its impact in workplaces in Nigeria.

Domestic  violence  often  walks  into  workplaces  unannounced  and  jeopardizes  the  health, safety and wellbeing of employees, their  colleagues  and the workplace  as  a  whole. It has become  a  momentous  social,  economic  and  psychological  concern  without  border  that transcends  all  spheres  of  life  and  pervasive  in  the  Nigerian  society  with  an  increasing preponderance. The implications of its workplace impact should be of concern to firms and could  be  checked  through  workplace  initiatives  and  collaboration  with  relevant  societal influencing institutions as all hands will have to be on deck for the general orientation of the socio-cultural  ecosystem  on  beliefs  on  domestic  violence  to  be  overhauled.  From  the foregoing,  it  becomes  imperative  for  workplaces  to  design  and  implement  timely  and proactively  responsive  corporate  policies  in  workplace  policies  aimed  at  prevention, intervention and possible termination of  the  impact  of domestic  violence for  the optimum health, safety and wellbeing of employees, the firms and society as a whole.

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