Do your employees feel safe when they are most vulnerable?
Do employees feel safe when they are most vulnerable? When Internal Committees and leadership are unaware of the due process, complaints can be mishandled and trust is lost. Regular training for IC members, HR, and leadership is essential to ensure fairness and accountability.
In this edition of #todayinposh, I want to start with this question, "Do your employees feel safe when they are most vulnerable?"
While this question is relevant in all situations, I will talk about it from the perspective of sexual harassment. Recently, I became privy to 2 complaints of sexual harassment and in both cases, the complainants were not given due justice.
In both cases, the complainant and the respondent were from 2 different organisations and in both cases, the Internal Committee did not follow due process. It was not because the Internal Committee members were biased.
It was because they DIDN'T KNOW the due process. In both cases, the employers as well as the leadership team also didn't know the due process.
As a result, what followed was hasty and ad hoc decisions, fear and worry, which was followed by an urgent need to organise training for the Internal Committee members, as an afterthought. And in both cases, the complainant lost the trust in their Internal Committee members and the organisation and decided to seek legal recourse.
Therefore, I want to ask this question again,
"Do your employees feel safe when they are most vulnerable?"
Building a safe and inclusive culture requires practice and continuous work. It will not happen overnight. To create a harassment-free workplace, you need to create practices and encourage actions that foster a culture of openness, trust, and accountability.
Employees who face harassment should be able to report it without hesitation and fear. And those who are being complained against should be held accountable, through corrective actions at an individual and organisational level.
One way to build trust in the Internal Committee is to train them regularly. Not as an afterthought. Just because your Internal Committee has not received a complaint so far, doesn't mean the harassment is not happening. It could be because they do not have trust in the organisation to follow due process. One incident can have a severe impact on the brand reputation.
Further, along with the Internal Committee members, employers, senior leadership team as well as HR should be a part of this training because it is not enough for the Internal Committee to know the process. All stakeholders should know the due process so that every one is aware of their roles and responsibilities and know what to do, when a complaint of sexual harassment is filed.