C-suite harassment: Why complaints procedures don’t work

Katie Sweatman, Partner, Kingston Reid

With the crushing fall from grace of senior executives under a cloud of findings of inappropriate workplace behaviour, there are now calls for intervention into complaints of executive misbehaviour at the board level. Bring in the board sexual harassment policies and codes of conduct.

Many eyes are on big corporate scrutinising what keeps going wrong. No doubt they have robust sexual harassment and inappropriate workplace behaviour policies in place clearly articulating that sexual harassment in the workplace is unlawful.

Invariably, they will have undertaken regular inappropriate workplace behaviour training, warning that breaches will be treated with utmost seriousness. 

These policies and procedures articulate complaints processes supported by well-briefed contact officers. They will have clever lawyers at their disposal able to mobilise quickly to investigate and make findings. Textbook management of inappropriate workplace behaviour, right?

Workplace practitioners will attest that Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkin’s reports of a boom in sexual harassment and other inappropriate workplace behaviour complaints is coinciding in a boom in workplace investigations. 

Read more: How to stamp out workplace sexual harassment

Many will suggest that this reflects a change in the community attitude that makes it more acceptable for women to call out unwelcome behaviour, together with the perceived safety of remote work eliminating the spectre of a face-to-face encounter with the person against whom they have just made a complaint.

By the time that inappropriate workplace behaviour is codified into a complaint and escalated to the board, however, the horse has bolted. Complaints procedures sitting at board level do not serve to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. Instead, they only serve as a tool for an organisation to respond to manage its legal risk and protect its reputation.

Complaints processes and independent investigations are not tools that will fix the core problem. Yes, workplace investigations effectively make factual findings about what happened, and workplace investigations conducted by lawyers and barristers will provide a useful forensic analysis of the company policies likely breached and the gravity of those breaches. 

They have a critical role in understanding what went wrong, and informing what needs to be done, but if relationships were not strained already by the open secret of bad behaviour and hurt feelings, an independent investigator interrogating employees’ perceptions of who said what and why will often scar those relationships  permanently.

Formal policy and procedure structures have a very important place in setting the foundations for expectations of conduct.  What might more effectively prevent the problems faced by big corporate is the implementation and active use of tools to empower and enable people to call out so called “low level behaviour” before it escalates into something worse.

It is not enough merely to say that people should speak up.  It is not enough to merely appoint a person as head of people and culture, and to define what culture the organisation intends to have in place.  Established power structures and human behaviour mean that these things by themselves simply do not work. 

Read more: Sexual harassment of HR director blamed for sudden resignation

There must be meaningful, practiced tools in place that enable people to sense-check behaviour that feels uncomfortable for them that is not just the human resources team.  An environment must be established in which bystanders and confidantes feel able to confidently call out silly things that people say without fearing repercussions or offence. 

There must be a culture supporting early informal intervention before those silly things evolve into unchecked bad behaviour and sexual harassment complaints.

How different things might have been for those that have so spectacularly fallen from grace had a trusted colleague had a chat to say, hey mate, that text message you sent was a bit off and liable to cause offence. 

If that matters to them, as we expect respectful relationships to matter to our business leaders, and whether they agree that it’s off or not, a bit of perspective and a quick informal apology for the unintended mis-step can and should be the end of the matter.  Trust is rebuilt and the event is largely unremarkable.  Certainly nothing that should involve a board or investors.

No doubt, there have and will continue to be instances of leaders who do not value their relationships with their subordinates and don’t wish to take responsibility for how their conduct and behaviour impacts on others. These should, however, be capable of identification early on, and swift action taken before there is a dossier of complaints in the hands of the beleaguered human resources team, and later the public. 

We should not be looking at big corporate for what we think it did right or wrong in responding to the conduct of powerful men who make errors of judgement that escalate into something worse.  We should be looking at big corporate for what it does next, once the punishments have been negotiated and everyone goes back to their business.  Will history be left to repeat itself, under cover of robust company and board policies and processes, or will real change occur.