[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Hi everyone, and welcome to a special Bella Asks episode of the Ethicast. I'm your host, Bill Coffin. As longtime members of the Business Ethics Leadership alliance, or bella, know, we offer a special concierge service whereby Bella members who have any questions at all about ethics and compliance can send them to us and then our internal experts will provide an answer and, or direct them to a helpful resource with more information.
Some of these concierge requests are rather specific to a particular company's needs, but many of them represent broad challenges facing Bella members. That's why we're using this show to thematically respond to high level questions from the Bella.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: The question for the ages. Bill. Yeah, this one, we get this one all the time.
And it is, it is a challenge, right? It is a challenge and it's a challenge for a couple of reasons, right? It is a challenge because there is a legitimate fear of over surveying employees, right? There's absolutely survey fatigue. We all get surveyed everywhere we go. I try to check out at the grocery store and it's like, on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to, you know, recommend blah, blah to your friends and family? I'm like, I'm just trying to buy milk. Come on. Right, so there's, there's, there's absolutely a fear of over surveying. There is a very robust data set and, and, and a very established practice inside a lot of organizations of running employee engagement surveys. And so when a compliance team is thinking we would like to run a Speak Up Culture survey, it you very often run into this brick wall that is HR's engagement survey. And the answer is, well, we're already surveying on engagement. We don't need to do another survey.
And in fact that's, that's very much not the case. And, and here are a couple of the reasons that you can give your HR team to explain how you can, how not only you can use the data from, from a Speak Up Culture survey, but they can use the data from a Speak Up Culture survey and all of the reasons why these two data sets actually work really nicely together. So the typical engagement survey gives the HR team a lot of actionable data on compensation, on benefits, on how people feel about their work environment, things along those lines, what they are less good at is giving you a really good sense of the extent to which people feel psychologically safe using their voice at work and the extent to which a particular manager is supporting that kind of psychologically safe work environment.
So that's point one. So data sets, go after data sets go after slightly different things and they don't necessarily lend themselves to the kind of analysis that a Speak Up Culture survey does. Point two is any survey, Speak Up Culture survey, engagement survey, doesn't matter which one is a point in time measurement. So if you can run a Speak Up Culture survey that is on an off cycle from your engagement survey, then you are going to start to get a more regular set of insights about what might be happening across a particular part of the business business. Third piece is these two data sets inform each other. So if you have a manager that is not scoring particularly well on the traditional engagement survey questions and you have that same department that does not score particularly well on Speak up culture, you can go and get in front of that problem faster than if you're relying on just the engagement survey data. So complementary data sets, data sets that are getting at different data points and data sets that can come from different points in time. All ways that these two things play really nicely together. So, Bill, if you're the director of hr, you might say to me, great, Erica, but what about that over surveying problem? Right? Totally legitimate concern over surveying is really a problem when employees don't feel like anything's happening with the questions you're already asking. If I feel like my company takes my point of view seriously and I can point to things that I have seen change as a result of prior surveys, you can survey me every month and I don't care. Right? Like, I will give you my opinion over and over and over again. It's not a problem. The challenge comes when I feel like you're asking me for my opinion and not listening.
So I would posit that the problem is actually less over surveying and more under action on existing data sets than anything else. So show your HR team what you will do with the SpeakUp culture data because if you do that and you can talk to employees about how you're planning on utilizing the results, you will see less pushback on the surveying process. There's also lots of creative ways that you can include the survey. You can embed it in training. Right? There's lots of ways that we see companies doing those pieces. But I would say push back on the over surveying piece because it's actually not over surveying. It's people feeling like their voices aren't heard.
This is such a good question, Bill. So I'm going to, I'm going to start with a couple of cross references first to additional materials that you can take in after you've had a chance to listen to this particular Ethical. So of course, Bill, earlier in the year you and I did the three part series on investigations and we talked a little bit about retaliation and non retaliation retaliation policies and retaliation prevention in that context. So if you haven't had a chance to take those in, I definitely recommend going and taking in that particular series. And then we also just wrapped our three part culture masterclass series which also got into how employees feel about retaliation. And so those are a couple of great resources for you to consider if you want to dive a little deeper on this particular topic, but the policy in particular. So I'm going to focus on two pieces here. The first is the policy and the second is the distribution of the policy. So first, let's talk about what a good policy is.
Good policy is going to be exactly what you want to think about for any other policy topic. Can my employees read it? Are they going to understand what it says when they find the policy?
What reading level do I need to write at to make sure that that's the case? Who's my audience? So really digging in and saying, who? Who am I writing for? Right. Am I writing for the average employee so that they understand the company's position? Am I writing for a manager so that they understand what to do and what not to do in the event of an issue in their particular part of the business? Who's my audience? So that's one of the first things to ask once you've kind of gotten an understanding of that. The second question is, okay, how am I going to make sure that this policy is something my employees can actually use? Because you can write a beautiful policy and if you post it and nobody reads it, did it actually happen? Right. It's like the compliance version of the tree falling in the forest is you write this policy, you post this policy, and nobody has any idea this policy exists. So then what are you going to do with the policy? Because this is the place where so many compliance teams end up running into trouble. The stuff that's within the four corners of their job responsibilities. They do a great job with it. But then when it starts to become a place where I have to interact with other control functions and think about the rest of the organization, then I start to struggle much, much more because I don't have a real good sense of how something's going to be used. So think about the types of retaliation allegations that you've had come up inside your organization.
And if the answer is none, I encourage you to look again, because chances are somewhere in your organization there is somebody who thinks they've been retaliated against for raising their hand.
Because often what employees say they experience as retaliation is not what we as lawyers have been trained to think of as retaliation. So it's not illegal behavior, it's not tangible employment action, it's ostracism. It's feeling like people are looking at you weird. Right. It's those kinds of things are what employees self report they have experienced in terms of what retaliation looks like. So think about what you're trying to prevent with the policy and then also with the communication of the policy. And I strongly encourage you to look at how you're training your managers both at the moment they become managers and then also at the moment of an investigation when they actually have the opportunity to prevent or participate in retaliation in the first place. Because you can train me back in January when I become a manager. Yeah. And if it's 18 or 20 months before I have a chance to practice those skills, I don't have them anymore. They've, they've, they've left my head. Everything you said to me is gone at that point. So what does a leave behind look like for a manager? What are like, can you do, you know, top five things to remember or three things to do or two things not to do? Right. Those are the kinds of tangible tools that you can give to a manager that are going to underpin a strong non retaliation policy and more importantly a culture where people feel comfortable raising their hand.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: You know, the sad truth is that training based skills age more like milk or bread than they do like wine. So, so that need to refresh, that is such a, such an important thing. So yeah, either on the Bella member hub or out there in the wide, wide world. Is there an example too of what you feel to be a really good non retaliation policy that you would go, you know what, this is a good example for people to look at if they're trying to start from scratch and they don't know where to begin.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. There are a couple of good examples on the Vela member hub. And then the other thing I would encourage you to look at is the definition of retaliation in the EU whistleblower directive. Regardless of whether you are actually subject to the EU whistleblower directive or not, the definition of retaliation in the directive is much more aligned with what employees self report as retaliation than anything that you're going to see here in the States. So yeah, there are a couple great examples in the member hub. But then also take a look at the definition in the, in the whistleblower directive, because it'll give you a good sense of, you know, what it is that you're trying to really combat.
Organizational justice can be summed up in the sentence, are all the animals equal, or are some of the animals more equal than others? That is at the heart of organizational justice as it pertains to culture. And it really comes down to, are the rules the same for everyone? In the event that somebody engages in misconduct, are they going to be treated the same way that everybody else is treated? Or are the rules for the highest performing salesperson just a little different than the rules for everybody else at the organization? And that is at the heart of organizational justice. Now, why should somebody care about organizational justice? What we see in our culture data, and we talk about this a little bit in the culture report that we issued earlier this year on closing the speak up gap in our culture work, we see employees will cite nothing. It would happen anyway, so why should I bother? Or what would happen wouldn't be fair. In the top three reasons that they didn't raise their hand when they saw something, along with, of course, the fear of retaliation. So it really comes to that question of, how do I demonstrate to my employees that I take issue seriously? I will take action, and the thing I do will be fair and will be fair regardless of, you know, who's engaged in the situation that is at the heart of organizational justice. And the reason that you want to promote it is because an environment where you don't have a strong sense of organizational justice is an environment where people are less likely to raise their hand, less likely to speak up. And potentially, particularly in this environment we're in right now, where there are so many other channels for a person to go to, potentially will take their concern outside, which is, of course, a disaster from an ethics and compliance perspective, whether they take it to TikTok and you're dealing with a reputational issue, or they take advantage of a whistleblower program like the new one that the Department of Justice has just set up, which is intended to kind of fill in the patchwork of other ways that you can bring misconduct to the attention of the government and get paid for it. So in an environment where you can take misconduct to the attention of the government and get paid for it, you really need to be thinking about, how do I shore up my speak up culture internally and make sure it's as strong as possible. So the first thing about promoting a sense of organizational justice is going to be making sure that you actually have one, which I realize sounds kind of crazy. But who's responsible for deciding on discipline at your organization in the event of substantiated misconduct? And then who's responsible for actually enforcing that discipline and making sure that that discipline happens? It is not uncommon, based on our data set, for the disciplinary decisions to be the responsibility of human resources and the individual business unit leaders that are responsible for the part of the business where the misconduct happened. In the event that that is happening, you need to make sure from an ethics and compliance perspective that your disciplinary matrix is really specific and well set out and that you have the opportunity to review discipline on a regular basis to make sure that like cases are handled alike. Otherwise you're going to potentially wind up in a situation where it's not just a perception that the rules are not the same for everyone. It is actually true that the rules are not the same for everyone because the sales leader in Germany has, you know, defended the high performing salesperson who's actually a bully and a jerk and you know, has, has all of these issues that have been substantiated, but nothing can be done because the manager is standing in the way of, of, of that person actually being disciplined. So looking at your disciplinary matrix, looking at the ways in which you can make sure that like situations are handled alike across your business and then telling that story. So making that disciplinary matrix something that you talk about to employees, making sure that you're storytelling when an investigation is finished, those are some of the things that are going to help you cultivate that organizational, that sense of organizational justice across the business. But the first step is really making sure that you have it and then you can promote it.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: And you know, we talk an awful lot about sister functions kind of working closely with compliance and ethics. And certainly this is a great opportunity to connect with hr because the simple cost of personnel churn attached to a lack of organizational justice is simply too high to be discounted.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Absolutely. And for those of you who are listening in, in audio only format, what you missed there was me emphatically nodding to what Bill just said, you know, doing, doing my best impression of a bobblehead. Yes, emphatically, yes. This is, you know, this is a situation where that, that close working relationship with human resources is critically important. And if that is something that you are seeking to cultivate right now, we have some great data in the sphere on what it looks like to have those kind of cross functional disciplinary meetings, what it looks like to have a strong process for substantiated misconduct, both from the perspective of who actually decides on discipline. How do you check on discipline? How do you make sure discipline is actually happening when discipline is decided upon? All of those critical pieces, there's benchmarking data there for anybody who's listening in and would like to get their hands on some.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Well, Erica, thank you so much again for coming back on the show. I always get so excited when we receive these questions, and I get really excited to hear what your answers are going to be. And I know everybody and our audience does, too. So once again, thanks so much.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Oh, Bill, it's absolutely my pleasure. This is one of my favorite things that I have the opportunity to do. And so to all those Bella members out there, keep the questions coming and Bill and I will come back and answer some more.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: All right, take you off stage.
To learn more about Bella, please visit bella.ethisphere.com to request guest access to the Bella Member Resource Hub and to speak with a Bella Engagement director. And if you have a question that you'd like answered on Bella Asks, be sure to and if you have a question that you'd like to see answered on Bella Asks, be sure to use the Bella Concierge service. And we'll get to that question just as soon as we can. I'm Bill Coffin, and this has been a special Bella Asks episode of the Ethicast. For more episodes, please Visit the Ethisphere YouTube
[email protected] ethisphere and if this is your first time enjoying the show, please make sure to like and subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thanks for joining us. And until next time, remember, strong ethics is good business.
I'm Bill Coffin, and this has been a special Bella Asks episode of the Ethacast. For more episodes, please visit the Ethisphere YouTube
[email protected] ethisphere and if this is your first time enjoying the show, please make sure to like and subscribe either on YouTube or on our podcasting platforms at Apple, Spotify, Google and Amazon Music. To learn more about Bella, please visit bella.ethisphere.com to request guest access to the Bella Member Resource Hub and to speak to a Bella Engagement director. Thanks for joining us. And until next time, remember, strong ethics is good business.
