Ask for Angela Is Expanding in Toronto. Employers Still Need Their Own Workplace Domestic Violence Plan.

Ahead of the World Cup coming to Toronto, more organizations are signing on to the Ask for Angela campaign.

Ask for Angela is a community safety initiative that allows people experiencing intimate partner violence to discreetly signal for help at participating locations by asking for “Angela.” Staff at participating organizations are trained to move the person to a safer, more discreet area and connect them with Victim Services Toronto.

As Toronto prepares to welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors for the FIFA World Cup, Victim Services Toronto has been expanding Ask for Angela across the city, including through new partnerships, out-of-home campaign materials, and additional training for frontline staff and volunteers.

This is critical, encouraging work. Businesses are helping shift problematic norms around the private nature of IPV by using their physical spaces, public visibility, and frontline workers to create more pathways to safety. Let’s keep that up.

But I have an uncomfortable question. While you're championing the connection of survivors with outside resources, what are you doing in your own backyard?

Ask for Angela is not a workplace domestic violence program

It's relatively easy to put up posters. It may even be good for your public image to participate in a recognizable community safety campaign, train staff to respond to members of the public, and share the initiative on social media. But Ask for Angela is not a substitute for an internal workplace domestic violence policy and program.

When the survivor is your own employee, you can't simply connect them with Victim Services Toronto and move on with your day. That referral may be important and exactly what the worker needs in that moment. But it's not the end of the employer’s role.

Resource: Not sure whether your workplace is ready for an employee disclosure?
I have a free Workplace Domestic Violence Readiness Package that complements DVatWork.ca’s excellent tools. It includes a legal-awareness self-assessment, a trauma- and violence-informed disclosure readiness self-assessment, and a 90-day roadmap for building a workplace domestic violence program.

DVatWork offers strong public resources for workplace domestic violence tools, training, risk screening, and policy development. My readiness package is designed to help employers ask: Do we understand our legal obligations? Are we ready to respond well? And what should we do over the next 90 days?

Domestic violence does not stay at home

The treatment of Intimate partner violence as a private matter is frustratingly persistent. The reality is that domestic violence follows people into work through stalking, harassment, monitoring, threats, repeated calls and messages, visits to the workplace, interference with attendance, and sabotage of performance.

DVatWork's resources are designed to help organizations recognize warning signs, respond appropriately, develop workplace policies, conduct risk screening, and train workers and workplace responders.

This is where employers need to understand the difference between community support and workplace responsibility. VST can provide crisis support, counselling, referrals, and connection to community resources. But VST is not going to run your internal workplace safety process for you. It's not going to decide who in your workplace needs to know about a safety risk. It's not going to coordinate reception, security, scheduling, IT, HR, management, occupational health and safety, payroll, or a joint health and safety committee. It's not going to adjust work locations, access permissions, parking arrangements, reporting lines, emergency contacts, or communication protocols.

That's the employer's role.

What employers need beyond the referral

If an employee discloses domestic violence, the employer should already know what happens next instead of inventing its response in the middle of a crisis.

At minimum, employers should have five things in place: a workplace domestic violence policy, a risk assessment or risk screening process, a workplace safety planning process, and trauma- and violence-informed disclosure/support training.

1. A workplace domestic violence policy

A domestic violence policy should explain what domestic violence is, how it can affect the workplace, how workers can seek support, how confidentiality will be handled, what limits may apply to confidentiality, and what roles different people in the organization may play. You can have a standalone policy or build this into your existing workplace violence policy.

DVatWork has a policy builder that provides a strong starting point for organizations that are beginning to formalize their response.

But a template isn't a program. Your policy still needs to be adapted to your jurisdiction, your workforce, your operations, your health and safety structure, and your community context. A downtown hotel, a public-facing retail environment, a unionized manufacturing workplace, a remote-first tech company, and a small professional services firm may all need different procedures.

A properly drafted policy should help you answer:

• Who receives the disclosure?
• Who documents it?
• What should be documented, and what should not?
• Who needs to know?
• What can be shared with co-workers?
• What if the abusive person is also an employee?
• What if performance concerns are connected to the abuse?
• What if the employee needs schedule changes, remote work, leave, or other accommodations?
• What if the worker does not want anyone else to know?
• What if the employer believes there is an imminent risk to others?
• What if the workplace is unionized?
• What if security measures affect other workers’ privacy or working conditions?

2. A risk assessment or risk screening process

When domestic violence creates a workplace safety concern, the employer needs a way to assess risk. And employers need to be able to conduct an initial assessment themselves rather than waiting for an external specialist to come in in case an emergency response is required in the circumstances.

DVatWork’s risk screening tool is intended for situations where an employee voluntarily seeks help, is referred because of warning signs, or where there has been a critical incident. The tool also emphasizes that information gathered should be treated carefully, while recognizing that confidentiality cannot always be guaranteed if there are threats of imminent harm.

Another free and user-friendly risk assessment tool is available in the iHEAL app, which was created by members of the same team behind DVatWork.

It's important that your managers and HR team become familiar with these tools and practice simulated scenarios before they actually need to be used. Showing confidence and understanding in the process is critical to building trust and keeping the conversation going with the survivor.

3. A workplace safety plan

A safety plan is where the policy becomes operational.

Depending on the situation, a workplace domestic violence safety plan might address:

• whether the person causing harm knows where the employee works;
• whether the person causing harm has attended or threatened to attend the workplace and how torespond if they do;
• reception or security instructions, including discreetly sharing photos or descriptions of the person causing harm;
• changes to work location, schedule, parking, phone number, email, or public-facing duties;
• safe arrival and departure plans, including community supports;
• emergency contacts and non-emergency local resources;
• what co-workers or supervisors need to know; and
• how confidentiality will be protected while still managing safety.

This is one of the places where the limits of an external referral become especially clear. Community services can support the survivor. They may also help with safety planning in the survivor’s broader life. But the employer is responsible for workplace safety planning within the workplace.

4. Trauma- and violence-informed disclosure training

If you are training staff to respond to members of the public through Ask for Angela, that is excellent. Now ask the next question: are you training managers, HR, health and safety representatives, reception, security, and frontline supervisors to respond when the person seeking help is a worker? Because internal disclosures are different.

Retaliation against survivors who disclose is a well-documented phenomenon, so have you mitigated that risk by educating your managers?

Are you able to see any attendance or performance concerns in the broader context of abuse, and what are you going to do about that?

Does HR know how to administer domestic violence leave, recognizing the need to deviate from strict procedures that may apply to your other leaves of absence?

Do you warn survivors about your concomitant duty to report child abuse so that they can make an informed decision about how much they disclose?

How do you explain the limits of confidentiality protections?

Are you creating a safe, empowering, and accessible response or a paternatilistic, judgmental, or charitable one?

A gentle call-in for employers supporting Ask for Angela

We do not talk enough about employers’ responsibilities when it comes to domestic violence at work. Many employers simply have not been taught to see this as a workplace issue.

So when a public campaign like Ask for Angela gains traction, it makes sense that organizations want to support it. It's concrete. It's visible. It offers a clear action step. But if you're supporting Ask for Angela because you care about survivors, then your internal systems need the same care.

A strong starting point is DVatWork.ca, which offers free tools, training, and resources for organizations responding to domestic violence at work. Its resources include an organizational readiness assessment, policy builder, training modules, and a risk screening tool.

I also offer a free Workplace Domestic Violence Readiness Package for employers who want to assess the legal and practical pieces of their own response. It includes:

• a legal-awareness self-assessment for the intersecting obligations that can arise when domestic violence affects the workplace;
• a trauma- and violence-informed disclosure readiness self-assessment; and
• a 90-day roadmap for building a workplace domestic violence program.

These resources are complementary. DVatWork gives employers excellent foundational tools. My readiness package helps employers think through the employment law, occupational health and safety, human rights, privacy, leave, accommodation, and internal-response issues that determine whether those tools will actually work in practice.

So, use the free resources, but don't stop there. Review how they align with the realities of your specific workplace, workforce, legal jurisdiction, and surrounding community, and then train people on what to do when someone actually discloses.

Need help building the internal side?

If your organization is participating in Ask for Angela, or thinking about how to support employees experiencing domestic violence, I can help you develop the workplace side of that response.

That may include a domestic violence policy, risk assessment process, safety planning framework, manager training, or a review of how your existing workplace violence, harassment, leave, accommodation, privacy, and health and safety systems fit together.

Book a confidential call about your workplace domestic violence policy or safety planning process.