Creating a safe culture - three insights from 50 investigations
Our Resolution team has had a full-on 12 months. While our work is confidential, the overall themes are the same as the stories about Downing Street. Has power been used appropriately? What happens if you call out problematic behaviour? In advance of our whistleblowing event in March, here are three questions to ponder - with links to more detailed thinking.
Are you helping to make it safe?
Worries can abound when someone rocks the boat – including the person who raised the concern, those who are implicated and those accountable for what happens next. Everyone has a role to play in cutting the fear factor down to size. Anyone can find themselves labelled or excluded: retaliation for raising concerns has skyrocketed during the pandemic. If you are accountable for policy, you have a central role. It pays to make sure your definition of bullying is one your organisation can stand by. What is/isn’t bullying can be an oil soaked banana skin, as there is no legal definition. We all know that one person’s ‘bullying encounter’ can be another person’s ‘effective management’.
Is your silence, violence?
If we were once willing to ‘price in’ issues with someone’s behaviour, can we really be morally outraged when there is serious fallout ? It’s one thing to point the finger at events happening elsewhere (eg at BoJo Ltd ), but what about where we work? From time to time it pays to ask the question - am I ignoring, excusing or celebrating something around me that isn’t right?
Did you know there’s a secret revolution going on?
The news can get us down, so here is some good news that you won’t find in the headlines: we are seeing a quiet revolution. In the last 12 months our investigators have been asked to go further than ever to find out what’s been going on. It’s part of a trend away from sweeping problems under the carpet. That unspoken shift - and the readily available support to leaders and HR - is good news for us all.
Hope to see you at the whistleblowing event being held in March. Further details will follow, but to register your interest, please click here
