After a series of sexual harassment scandals that have rocked Hollywood over the last six months, there was a palpable sense that the glitzy event was no longer business as usual, and that people felt empowered to speak out and demand change.
.@EmmaWatson shows off her #TimesUp tattoo at the Vanity Fair #Oscars party. Love her ❤ pic.twitter.com/ucfng8oW1r
— Access (@accessonline) March 5, 2018
And the entertainment industry is not the only sector determined to get its house in order. Last month, the leader of the House of Commons, Andrea Leadsom pledged to “fundamentally change” the working culture in parliament, after a report showed more than a third of staff in Westminster have experienced harassment or bullying in the last year.
But have the recent spate of high-profile harassment scandals and a veritable tsunami of newspaper headlines encouraged other people to speak up about malpractice in their own workplace? Or are people no longer willing to accept certain practices?
A report recently published by Expolink, which provides whistleblowing hotline services for more than 600 companies, revealed it has seen a 20% increase in the number of calls it has received over the last year.
These calls covered a wide range of subjects, including health and safety, harassment and unprofessional behaviour.
“In recent years, we have seen this rate slowly increase as employees have become gradually more comfortably with speaking out and using whistleblowing hotlines,” says Expolink’s chief executive, John Wilson. “This trend has leapt forward again since the autumn.
“You can never be certain of a causal link,” Mr Wilson tells SHPonline. “But it’s a bit of a coincidence that we’ve seen this uplift recently.
“We suspect that broader social issues are affecting people’s confidence and encouraging them to come forward. It’s an obvious correlation and it’s about how confident people feel about how their concerns will be treated by their employer. Will it be investigated fairly? I guess the current trend shows people that it is worth reporting something and they will be listened to.”
According to the report, almost a quarter (23.3%) of the calls received by Expolink in 2017 involved HR, grievance procedures and unfair dismissal.
While almost one in five (19.2%) were regarding unprofessional behaviour and 14.4% were about bullying, discrimination or harassment.
Almost one in 10 (9.4%) were about theft or fraud and 5.9% were about health and safety, and environmental safety.
Mr Wilson adds there was a “huge uplift” in the number of calls about sexual harassment in the last three months of 2017.
“We all like to think this kind of behaviour does not go on, but sadly it does,” adds Mr Wilson. “I think people are becoming less accepting of behaviour that 10 or 20 years ago would have been tolerated. People are becoming more demanding of their workplace and they are not prepared to tolerate behaviour, which they see as demeaning or discriminatory.
“What the businesses we work for worry about is if it becomes endemic and you get reputation damage. These can range from the very minor to the very serious and could potentially damage a company’s reputation.
“Every company we work for will have their own internal processes as well, so people can talk to people in the company directly,” adds Mr Wilson. “We’re picking up the tip of the iceberg. Depending on the client, you might conclude for every report we handle, the client might be handling three or four. We’re an essential failsafe.”
But Mr Wilson adds that just having measures like a whistleblowing hotline in place is not enough.
“It’s like the old days when the boss used to say ‘my door is always open’, but nobody ever went through the door. If staff think you are just ticking a box, it will not achieve results. If you want to protect your business and really hear from people, you have to be prepared to demonstrate you will listen to what people say. If somebody wants to be anonymous, don’t spend your time trying to work out who that person is. You must focus on what they are reporting instead.
“Ironically, the businesses that are the best run and the most open will receive the highest number of reports. A lot of businesses take the view why do I need a hotline, but if they employ 20,000 things will go wrong and people need to feel it’s ok to speak up. You need to have both sides of the equation in place.”
The head of policy at the trade union Unison, Sampson Low, agrees there is more awareness now of harassment and health and safety issues, with more employers using whistle-blowing hotlines as part of a “suite” of other measures.
“There’s a definite awareness of health and safety and patient safety in health and social care settings, where I think there is more willingness to phone up about these issues,” adds Mr Low.
“Our local reps are being approached by more members of staff with a variety of mental health and stress issues. We think it’s vital that companies and organisations are open to staff or through these hotlines. It can alert them to financial irregularities, harassment and other shortcomings.
“In this day and age of social media, your reputation can sink very fast from a business point of view and treating staff should be a basic building block of any organisation.
“There is also a greater acknowledgement in large employers about staff wellbeing issues and no tolerance for harassment, bullying and other poor behaviours,” says Mr Low.
“The problem for us in the public sector is that budget cuts are forcing some very tough decisions on managers. Often the quickest way to get cuts through is to drive through them at breakneck speed. It’s been a tough few years in the public sector.”
The advent of new technologies and markets mean that over the last 20 or 30 years, many of our working lives have changed beyond all recognition. What was tolerated back then is no longer tolerated now in a great number of workplaces and whistleblowing hotlines play a vital role in uncovering poor practices. Surely, everybody deserves to work in healthy and safe environments, free from harassment.
To read the full Expolink Whistleblowing Benchmarking Report, click here:
https://www.expolink.co.uk/resources/benchmarking-report-2018/
In this episode of the Safety & Health Podcast, ‘Burnout, stress and being human’, Heather Beach is joined by Stacy Thomson to discuss burnout, perfectionism and how to deal with burnout as an individual, as management and as an organisation.
We provide an insight on how to tackle burnout and why mental health is such a taboo subject, particularly in the workplace.
