The price of not acting on employee complaints about the boss- the rise of online employee complaint portals There are reasons why management might choose to ignore an employee complaint about harassment instead of following up with a thorough and timely investigation but none of them turn out to be a good reason in the long run. Maybe the manager is highly valued, an all-around great person whom you don’t want to alienate; and maybe the complainant is a known whiner and is always raising issues. You may fear that if you launched a work investigation other people would come out of the woodwork about similar issues and who wants to open that can of worms ! Those may sound like good reasons, but watch out …… We all know about the high profile Hollywood cases but the rise of online portals and employee petitions present a real risk if you choose not to investigate or tackle staff concerns. Last year saw some high profile resignations from the charity sector after details of alleged sexual harassment went public and viral, the charity originally maintained the complaints were informal and were therefore dealt with through confidential mediation [ no resignations] In February Ray Kelvin the founder of the fashion brand Ted Baker was forced to resign following a high profile staff petition. The petition, on the workplace website Organise, said that more than 200 Ted Baker staff were finally breaking their silence after at least "50 recorded incidents of harassment" at the fashion group. The immediate fallout has had a very fast impact on share price and profitability. Currently the Organise website is highlighting staff petitions from employees at a number of retail organisations and another petition that accuses a CEO of a medium sized company of sexual misconduct and bullying further claiming that HR has ‘wilfully ignored reports of harassment’. Staff leaving the company now have opportunities to make their complaints heard by writing employer reviews on sites like Indeed and Glassdoor so it is really important to have meaningful exit interviews/ conversations to scoop up any issues and more importantly to address them in a timely way. Make sure you have a number of channels that would allow people to raise concerns and that your policies and procedures give clear examples about harassment and the behaviours that will not be tolerated. So what should you do when an employee complains about the boss ? As ever ACAS have some wise words about the who, what, why and when of handling an investigation into the complaint but lets back track to the fact this is about the boss. Maybe it’s a ‘kissy, kissy’ type of environment or an environment that has plenty of ‘banter’, maybe it’s a [ insert your own word]. None of that matters it needs investigation, if the complaint is malicious the claimant needs to be challenged and if it’s not chances are the person has thought long and hard about grassing up the boss and is really nervous about raising a complaint so you owe it to everyone to investigate fairly. You may want to ask someone from outside the company to deal with the investigation to ensure transparency and impartiality and confidentiality during the process especially if you do not have a dedicated HR function.
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