One of the effects of legislation and legal decisions is to guide organizations towards calmer or at least more reassuring waters, in particular by setting out administrative policies as well as specific orientations for research and practices aimed at preventing or combating violence in the workplace. 

According to various sources, a workplace anti-violence policy should include:

• A statistical basis and articles of law from civil and labour legislation related to the obligations and rights of the members of the industrial organization.
• Simple definitions of the terms related to the people involved in the development of violent situations (attackers, victims, witnesses, informal caregivers, managers, union representatives, specialized professionals [psychologists, guidance counsellors, those in charge of the employee assistance program, consultants in organizational management, doctors and nurses specialized in occupational health], and the external resource person or people in charge of investigating complaints).
• Precise but not restricted scope of application of policy (people involved in and work sectors covered by the complaint process; types, forms and definitions of workplace violence recognized by legislation and case law; and legal, administrative and union measures provided for).
• A comprehensive process for dealing with complaints: a clear procedure for receiving complaints and determining their admissibility, a fair hearing for the parties, a process involving mediation and conciliation and investigating complaints, led by a resource person from outside the organization, preliminary and final reports of such investigation, representation by the parties, a graded system of disciplinary measures and specific time limits for each step in the process. The whole process involving mediation and conciliation and investigation entails a lot of report-writing on the part of the members of the joint committees responsible for the policy and very little report-writing on the part of the individuals assumed, before the investigation, to be attackers, victims and witnesses in a case of workplace violence.
• An assessment of the training requirements of members of the organization who are responsible for managing the policy, as well as of members of the joint occupational health and safety committee or the joint labour relations committee.
• The development of a plan for communicating the policy to the company, its suppliers, its clients or customers and its political and socio-economic partners.

Why it is better to avoid a strict or blind "zero tolerance" policy :

• Promoting a very strict or "blind" zero tolerance policy encourages a work culture centred on excessive supervision which discourages the definition of a variety of personality types or that is very rigid regarding the least definition of anger or discourtesy or the least hint of perversely narcissistic or technocratic tendencies that can creep into anyone's behaviour in the workplace.
• The inflexibility conveyed by an overly strict approach can discourage the reporting of violent situations out of fear of causing co-workers to be fired. This approach can prevent the implementation of preventive measures related to the detection of circumstances that present a risk of violence in the workplace. Thus, the overly strict or blind nature of a "zero tolerance" approach entails both no longer being able to express or channel one's aggressiveness in a healthy way in the workplace and also no longer daring to denounce risky circumstances and aggressive acts out of fear of harming others, on account of the severity of the disciplinary measures taken.
• Another danger of this approach is to target or stigmatize individuals or groups who have instigated, or been victims or witnesses of workplace violence, to the point of thwarting their careers within the organization or their prospects of being re-integrated into the labour market.