Episode Transcript
[00:00:15] Speaker A: 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. Jodi is vice president of Data and Services at Ethisphere, where she specializes in implementing corporate compliance solutions for Ethiceer'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 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. 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. 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?
[00:02:38] Speaker B: 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, it's a real fear that organizations need to take into account.
Eric, do you have any additional thoughts on this?
[00:03:19] Speaker C: 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, taliation 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 if continues to be a problem.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: 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, you know, 15 years ago.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: On a long enough timeline. An inevitable outcome of workplace investigations is disciplinary action. Applying the right level of outcome to an investigation is crucial to a fair and effective ethics and compliance program. It's something that the Department of Justice's evaluation of corporate compliance programs encourages, but doesn't necessarily require, which places it in the realm of voluntary best practices.
But what is the DOJ really looking for and what really constitutes a best practice?
Discipline calibration really sounds like something that's perhaps more suited for a human resources podcast and discussion. So why are we talking about it from an ethics and compliance point of view?
[00:04:54] Speaker C: Well, Bill, I'll take that one. You're correct. Discipline calibration, it does have a very strong HR flavor. Obviously, discipline is part of the HR mandate.
But ethics compliance comes into play for two reasons. In most organizations, when incident is reported to the hotline or something is brought up to be investigated. There's a strong partnership between HR and ethics and compliance. That's not only the investigative process, the interviews, the findings and the document gathering, but it's also the post investigation aspect. It's drawing conclusions. It's corrective actions. It's potential discipline and calibration of that discipline is really a continuation of the partnership that starts with the initial report and works all the way through the investigative life cycle. The other aspect is what you mentioned in the introduction, the Department of Justice EECP guidelines, and I even wrote this down so I got it correct. Section 2, subsection C states, and I quote, does the compliance function monitor its investigations and resulting discipline to ensure consistency?
Now, for those who may be outside the US or not part of the DOJ guidelines, it's a key post investigation element that needs to be taken a look at to ensure that there's validity in your investigation process.
Probably equally important, it's a good best practice.
Any process that you have, you want to check, you want to balance, you want to be able to take a look at it, make sure that it's valid, that helps not only your investigative process, but speak up in general. It gives employees a sense that there's a process that happens and it's valid, it's done correctly. And finally, if you needed any more reason, it's just building that continued partnership with your good friend and partner, human resources when it comes to looking at investigations and the HR and the speak up process.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Jodi, I'm curious. In today's world, do you see a lot of E and C organizations actually calibrating discipline?
[00:06:53] Speaker B: So, Bill, this is an interesting question because I want to talk about what we see from a data perspective and, and then what we see from the program assessment lens from a data perspective. In response to the EQ question asking whether organizations are formally calibrating discipline, 84% of WME honorees indicate, yes, they are.
But what we actually end up seeing in practice, even among organizations that maybe weren't a WME honoree, that indicated in taking that eq, yes, we're formally calibrating discipline. When we really dig in, we see it's really not quite formal, maybe in the sense that ethisphere would expect to see. So is there a calibration of discipline maybe taking place? Maybe, for example, HR is looking at past cases from the prior year that involve similar misconduct, or maybe looking at what they have in their case management system or HRIS system regarding the same. But there's no formality to that process.
And what the problem with that is is if you have a change in players, say you have a change in personnel and ethics and compliance or change in personnel in hr, that practice that you have in place is subject to change or it's just subject to falling off the radar. So that's when we talk about calibrating discipline. It's not just having a practice in Place, it's formalizing and it's documenting it so that if you do have a change in personnel, that practice lives on. Eric, anything to add on that one?
[00:08:31] Speaker A: Once an investigation into reports of workplace misconduct is closed, organizations often conduct a root cause analysis or RCA on the issue. But is that always the right course of action? Should root cause analysis be conducted for all investigations or are there certain criteria that should trigger a root cause analysis process?
It's a good question because there are plenty of obstacles to overcome when conducting effective root cause analysis, from incorporating the right data analytics to securing leadership buy in. And perhaps the biggest one of them all is ensuring that the lessons learned after conducting root cause analysis translate into sustainable change rather than becoming an unimpactful check the box exercise. Jody, Once an investigation is closed, should root cause analysis be conducted for all investigations? Or, or are there certain criteria that should trigger a root cause analysis process?
[00:09:22] Speaker B: So Bill, this is a really good question and if you think about it, within organizations, many organizations, especially if, you know, larger organizations, may be conducting a lot of investigations and maybe getting a lot of reports.
And so especially for those that maybe don't have a true root cause analysis process in place, the thought of doing root cause analysis for all investigations could be a really serious undertaking and it may not be the best approach.
So one of the things that I think about and I'll advise clients when doing program assessment work is, you know, to maybe start on a scalable basis, think about setting forth criteria for maybe the most impactful investigation, so maybe those that pose serious financial risk, perhaps it involves a leader, maybe repeated issues and starting there versus trying to board the ocean and do everything at once. Because what you don't want to do is establish a root cause analysis process and get stretched too thin because then what will end up happening is it may not really be a good process in the end.
So again, thinking about, you know, how are you going to start doing this process, you know, maybe, you know, those type of investigations that really are in place, grievances, perhaps you're not going to do root cause analysis for those, you know, especially in early stages.
And then also thinking about whatever you decide to do, documenting that process, and you'll hear about that. I'm sure Eric will bring that up as well, you know, later on today when we're talking about how documenting what you're doing, you know, what are you going to do, who is going to be involved, you know, why are you doing it, you know, so really thinking of formalizing the processes is important.
[00:11:20] Speaker C: Eric.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: What are some of the biggest obstacles that organizations face when they're conducting an effective root cause analysis? Are there any strategies that you have for overcoming such obstacles too?
[00:11:30] Speaker C: It's a great question, Bill. I think the thing that I see probably more. There's probably two things that I see most commonly when it comes to working with companies and their approach to Rook House analysis and some of the pitfalls. The first one I'm going to say is really analysis paralysis. It's, it's for anybody who's heard some of the other ethicasts we've done. It's the idea that you have to do everything all at once. Jody referred to it as boiling the ocean. And I think that's a really applicable way to describe it.
The obstacle is, is, is, is. Is being overwhelmed. It's thinking about all the things that we have to do to get this program together to be able to do root cause analysis. And it's overwhelming. So that analysis paralysis, that pulling together the, the program, I think is one of the biggest obstacles. I see the other one, for lack of a better term, I'm going to call it organizational resistance. I think there's a couple of components to that.
There's obviously a question of the time involved.
It's people dedicating time to do root cause analysis. If you've got a committee, it's having other people provide their resources and their time pulling data, pulling numbers, all wondering is this even valuable? Is this really something that we should do? And I would argue it is. It is very much something you should do, but it's still a commitment. And then another component of that, sometimes there are root cause analysis. Quite honestly, if it's doing its job, maybe exposing some uncomfortable systemic weaknesses in an organization, it's being able to show where a control is not as strong as it needs to be. It's showing where a check and a balance isn't nearly as effective as it needs to be to counteract these, to get over those obstacles. I would argue first of all, small steps. Again, using the boil the ocean analogy, you don't have to hit a home run right away. Let's start with a very simple root cause analysis process. Let's think about how you're going to do it. Jody talked about scaling in the first question and I would argue that's absolutely true. Does it have to be one size fits all? No.
Think about the steps you're going to take based on what the incident was.
The other one is the process that you put into place. Make sure that it's scalable, make sure that it's logical. Make sure that you're not wasting people's time by scaling it. The other piece is having organizational buy in being able to communicate what do we do root cause analysis and why is it important for you? Why is it important for the organization to get to the heart of it? If you're a manufacturing organization and you have defects, you're going to want to find out why.
If you're an organization and you've got incidents that need to be investigation investigated, misconduct incidents, it's logical you want to find out why and do what you can to prevent them from happening again.
[00:14:17] Speaker A: For a ton of free in depth reports, guidance, documents, articles, videos and more to help you reach ever higher levels of excellence and ethics, visit Ethisphere's resource center at ethisphere.com resources thanks for joining us. We hope you've enjoyed the show. For new episodes each week, be sure to subscribe to us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And if you haven't already, please follow at the sphere on LinkedIn as well to help us spread the word about best practices and business integrity. That's all for now, but until next time, remember, strong ethics is good business.
[00:14:57] Speaker C: There.
