Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi everyone. In this episode, we're going to discuss how workplace retaliation is impacting Speak up rates and what ENC teams can do about it. I'm your host, Bill Coffin, and this is the Ethicast.
By now, the statistics should be familiar to everyone. More than 85% of employees say that they would report an instance of workplace misconduct if they observed one. However, when the moment of truth arrives, only about half of the people who said they would report actually follow through with it. A big reason for that alarming drop off is a lack of confidence that the system will perform as it's supposed to. What's the point of reporting, after all, if the people who are breaking the rules aren't going to be held accountable for it? Now, this is a matter of organizational justice, one of the fundamental pillars of an ethical culture.
But there is another reason, one closely related to the lack of confidence that I just cited, and that is retaliation. For many employees, speaking up about misconduct carries the very real risk of being punished overtly or covertly by their peers and managers for it. What's worse, this creates a vicious feedback loop with a lack of confidence in the system. If the system won't address misconduct, then all it really does is alert those who broke the rules so they can retaliate against those who spoke up.
This is how organizational integrity swallows its own tail.
Workplace retaliation remains a very serious issue at businesses everywhere. And it doesn't erode just speak up culture. It also erodes the very notion of psychological safety. Put simply, you can't have a strong culture of ethics unless you can wrap your arms around the issue of workplace retaliation. And as long as retaliation continues to throttle your Speak up culture, it will also throttle your organization's ability to innovate, compete, and succeed.
With us today to discuss this issue is Jodi Fredrickson and Eric Jorgensen. Jody is Vice President of Data and Services at Ethisphere where she specializes in implementing corporate compliance solutions for Ethisphere's clients. Her work includes providing clients with ethics and compliance thought leadership, drafting and revising policies that meet the highest legal and ethical standards, and evaluating clients ethics and compliance programs. Eric is a director on the data and services team at Ethisphere and and specializes in ethics and compliance program management, specifically the evaluation and implementation of corporate compliance and ethics solutions. His work includes evaluations of client programs, assessment of programmatic components, and operational thought leadership for clients. Jodi and Eric, welcome to the Ethicast. It's wonderful to have you.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Hi Bill.
[00:02:34] Speaker C: Thanks for having us.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Thanks, Bill.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: Retaliation is a perpetual problem for companies. Year after year, it rates as one of the top three reasons why employees are reluctant to speak up. And do you see the climate around retaliation as improving or getting worse? And are there outside factors that companies should be considering when addressing retaliation? Jodi, would you like to start?
[00:02:54] Speaker C: Sure. Bill.
I would say over the course of my career, I have not seen issues regarding retaliation getting worse or getting better. When I talk with clients about this issue, I describe it as an evergreen issue. It is just a constant.
And it's normal, right? As somebody that's going to be wanting to raise their hand to report potential misconduct is going to have concern about their job regardless and separate and apart from the political or the economic environment that you're currently in.
So it's a real fear that organizations need to take into account.
Eric, do you have any additional thoughts on this?
[00:03:36] Speaker B: No, I agree with you completely.
I don't think it's getting better or worse. I'm a little surprised that it stays the same.
Every survey that we see, every survey that we, even as a company do, retaliation becomes one of the top three in different orders, but always in the top three. In terms of reasons that prevent employees from wanting to speak up, you would hope that over time we would get better at it, but it continues to be a problem.
[00:04:01] Speaker C: And maybe, Bill, just one thing to add on top of that, one thing that I would call out is that understanding about the concerns relating to retaliation I think has gotten better over time. Like, if you look back to about 2010 compared to today, the understanding about it and the influence that culture can have on willingness to report misconduct, I think is much better than where we were 15 years ago.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: Eight common forms of retaliation are demotion, firing, reduced salary, harassment, intimidation, threats, coercion, and exclusion. Eric, what I'd like to ask you is, from an individual employee perspective, are any of these worse than the others, or are they all about the same? And looking at the entire employee population, you know, same question, are any of these worse than the others and why?
[00:04:53] Speaker B: I'm sure we can have a great theoretical discussion of, you know, one might be a little bit worse than the other in different circumstances, but quite honestly, retaliation is retaliation and has a chilling effect on the employee population. It prevents people from speaking up. We often talk more about the formal versus the informal retaliation. The formal being you're denied a promotion, you are, you're outright fired. There are other consequences versus the informal of being ostracized, not being included, being kept off on your own island, and not being Able to participate.
Both have incredibly chilling effects. Some are more visible than other people see, but some are a little bit more silent. But again, it all comes back to preventing people from speaking up. And again, it has a terrible effect on employee morale as well as speaking up.
[00:05:43] Speaker C: Yeah, I agree. And I think that this is really where educating your managerial group becomes so important for organizations because we often, you know, there's a lot of discussion about some of the formal aspects of retaliation, but the informal can lead a well meaning manager down the wrong road.
And that's where that education for the managerial population becomes just critical to maintaining that culture where employees will be willing.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: To raise their hand to prevent retaliation. Companies have to recognize it when it happens. What methods have you seen to effectively monitor for retaliation? And, and are there a couple gold standard measures that maybe every company should absolutely employ? Eric, what do you think?
[00:06:31] Speaker B: I'd love to tell you that I've seen lots of gold standards and lots of great examples. Sadly we haven't. We spend a lot of time working with companies, quite honestly, all over the world and oftentimes when we talk about their retaliation or their anti retaliation steps, we hear, of course we do, of course we monitor. We have a process. And then when you peel back that onion a little bit, you find out there really isn't a process or it's incredibly informal, normal. I would argue a couple of steps really need to be taken by any organization that wants to be serious about monitoring for retaliation and trying to prevent it. The first thing is to be able to have almost a mini risk assessment for retaliation monitoring, to be able to determine whether or not what's the risk that is going to occur.
The chance of retaliation, the impact of retaliation of an employee reporting on their boss or reporting something within their department is going to be a higher chance of retaliation than an employee reporting about some department on the other side of the company or some, some location that's not close by, chances are going to be higher. So being able to have a formal risk assessment, say how, how likely is it to occur.
Second of all, once you use that risk assessment, be formal in what you're going to do to monitor retaliation, think about what are you physically going to do. We're going to look at employee reviews, we're going to look at promotions, we're going to look at bonuses, we're going to look at chances for improvement, all of those formal things.
And then probably what I would argue is one of the most important, and this is the third step, is make sure that you don't Forget about the informal monitoring for retaliation. Sometimes it's as simple as calling up the employee and discreetly saying, how's it going? And listening for those telltale signs that maybe it's okay, but it doesn't sound like it. So let's do a little bit more digging and let's make sure.
Jodi, any thoughts on that?
[00:08:19] Speaker C: Yeah, I really don't have a lot to add, but I did want to piggyback off of one thing that you mentioned, Eric, and that was reaching back out. I think that my lawyer friends within organizations often want to close the investigation and move forward and that's okay. However, that loop back has shown to be really effective of reaching back out maybe two months or six weeks after the close.
Especially in certain types of cases where maybe you're concerned that there is a greater likelihood that retaliation could occur. For example, an employee making a report against his or her manager, that may be a higher risk environment. And at least with regards to the program assessment work that I have done, I have heard of organizations that have implemented this practice and they've gotten ahead with of retaliation concerns. So they didn't wait, they didn't wait until that person were to again raise their hand. They may not be willing to do that if they feel that they're being retaliated against. They got ahead of that situation, which is ideally what you want to do.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: And Jody, you bring up a great point. You know, especially somebody who is reported or even somebody who's been a witness and participated in an investigation, they've really gone out on their own. They've really put themselves out there. And now we're expecting them to put themselves out there again and raise their hand a second time and say, feel like I'm being retaliated against. You know, a phone call can be a magical thing. When you're part of an investigation, you're really putting your trust in the process that the company has and to having that trusted investigator, to having that trusted person of authority who's investigated call up to say how you doing can be not only powerful, but also a great opening to be able to report something if it's not right.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: That's a fantastic observation. And Jody, I'd like to ask you a little bit more about communication when it comes to communicating non retaliation policies and training to an organization.
What are some of the pitfalls to avoid or elements to make sure are included in such a program?
[00:10:25] Speaker C: All right, so let's talk about the pitfalls first. So the pitfalls I would say to avoid are just Having a policy and not communicating about it or just mentioning maybe in a sentence in your code training, you have to really work at it.
You just can't rely on communicating about it once or twice a year.
I think the ethics and compliance function, if they are working with other shared services groups like human resources, or leveraging their executive team to communicate on ethics and compliance topics, continuing having that tagline in those communications and giving a nod to this real concern is key. I think I often hear in talking with ethics and compliance functions, they'll say, we talk about it all the time. And when I'm really looking at and conducting a program assessment, I see, well, you do talk about it some, but I'm not sure I would say all the time. You really need to do it all the time. And then when it comes to the training, again, going back to that manager training, really making sure that those managers understand what does retaliation look like in practice? Because they're the ones on the front line.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Retaliation is not just another policy.
To your point, we often work with companies, they say, well, we talk about it all the time. I love that. Yeah, we hear the same phrase.
But you're right. When we peel it back, you know, the first step of our investigation process is to let people know that we have a non retaliation policy.
What does that mean? And if you ask the average employee to define retaliation, they may give a general sense of what it is, but do they really know what it means and do they know how they're going to be protected? So I would argue just taking a little bit more of a detailed approach to training and communication with retaliation and really make sure that employees understand what it is and what it isn't.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: You have both been part of ethics compliance organizations, you have both seen instances of retaliation up close, and you have both advised companies around their efforts to mitigate retaliation.
Is there any aspect of the retaliation phenomenon that continues to surprise you, especially around how organizations choose to address this?
[00:12:38] Speaker B: I would love to tell you that it still surprises me, but it doesn't because there's two consistent things and it has to do with understanding what retaliation is.
I'll never forget talking to a manager one time who was accused of retaliation and the response was, what are you talking about? I have done my best to stay away from this employee and have nothing to do with them.
Well, you've just ostracized them, you've just held them off. You're retaliating against them. You may have good intentions, but you can't do that. You shouldn't do that it has a chilling effect. So being able to educate, especially managers, especially leaders, on exactly what retaliation is, I think is incredibly important in the same respect. And this may surprise you, it may surprise some of the listeners. But also making sure that employees understand what retaliation is.
Retaliation is, is, is means you still have to do your job and you still have to do a good job doing it in the same respect we've had, we've had employees or had experience with employees who say, I feel like I'm being retaliated against.
Well, no, you didn't finish your project on time, or no, you did something unsatisfactory. And as that's completely separate of, of the report that you made or the investigation you participated in, you still have to do your job and there's consequences for not doing it.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: Well, Jodi and Eric, thank you so much for sharing your insights today on how retaliation is harming workplaces and what ENC teams can do about it. This is a really important topic. It's so vital to the health of SpeakUp culture, and I learned a whole lot hearing from you today. So once again, thanks for coming onto the program.
[00:14:12] Speaker C: Thanks Bill, for having me.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: Thanks, Bill.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: Ethisphere has just published its latest report, AI and Ethics and Compliance Risk to Manage Tool to Leverage, which features an overview of AI regulatory trends and AI governance best practices and use cases from ENC leaders at Cargill, Palo Alto Networks and Verisk, who are integrating AI into their team's daily work. To get your free copy of this report, visit ethisphere.com thanks so much for joining us. We hope you've enjoyed the show. For new episodes each week, be sure to follow at The Sphere on LinkedIn as well as to subscribe to us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Every like comment and share really helps us spread the word about best practices in business integrity and we deeply appreciate your support.
That's all for now, but until next time, remember, strong ethics is good business.
