Canadian HR Reporter is the national journal of human resource management. It features the latest workplace news, HR best practices, employment law commentary and tools and tips for employers to get the most out of their workforce.
Issue link: https://digital.hrreporter.com/i/1202688
www.hrreporter.com 3 It's important to understand people's merits and see if they do fit into the values of the organization, says Williams, "throughout the process, like when you're interviewing candidates for the organization so they understand what your values are as an organization and also [for the employer] to understand what their values are." Another way to constrain behaviours such as this from escalating is to have some kind of whistleblower policy, says Candido. "There's a lot of downright fear. There's a lot of 'I don't want to believe anything is actually happening' that goes on… 'I didn't really want to get involved. I a renewed or heightened interest from the survivors/complainants… Maybe the employers' reaction just hasn't caught up to that," he says. "I almost always say to my employer- side clients, 'For just a little bit more in fees, I could draft manuals that would eliminate 99 per cent of the problems you could ever face.' And my success rate on that is probably below five per cent. Nobody ever takes me up on it," says Sheard. "The problem is those savings never show up in the balance sheet. And I think that's why a lot of people are opposed to them." While a policy around workplace relationships is a good idea, it's not straightforward, says Wright. "It's really tricky; to put an 'absolutely not/no way/full stop' on relationships at work is unrealistic. I think it's impractical and probably not necessary. I mean, peer-level relationships happen all the time. That's probably OK… So it sounds like crafting a policy that is pragmatic and useful, and not arbitrarily doing a broad stroke and everything, I think that's really hard." Improved recruitment when it comes to executives is another option to combat the issue, she says. "It is complicated and hard to get right even on a good day. And that's where things like psychological assessments and the experiences, judgment and intuition of a really good advisor [or] executive recruiter [help]," says Wright. "It's possible to get a sense of how someone makes decisions, how they exercise judgment, how they respond under pressure, what degree their emotions play in how they think through situations." wasn't sure what was going to happen. I don't want to be responsible for somebody losing their job.'" If HR has a good relationship with employees outside of this, they're more likely to be trusted, she says. "That's the other issue: Does an employee report to HR this has happened and then HR actually do something about it? Do they have the credibility internally to make anything happen? So, it's both do they trust HR [and] do they think HR has the credibility to do anything?" But you have to be very careful around a whistleblower program because you don't want it to be one of these big brother situations where people are always looking over their back, says Williams. "The best way to do it is really building out culture and in living your culture around respect, equality, integrity." There also needs to be more training around workplace relationships that is taken seriously, says Candido. "If you really want to affect any kind of cultural change, that conversation has to be ongoing, and it has to be informal as well as formal. Things like employee focus groups where you talk about culture and you talk about things like… how we behave, how we speak to each other, how we deal with each other. I think that has more impact than just issuing a memo or a policy or finding out that something's happened and 'Here's what we did about it.'" Greater diversity would also make a lot of sense, she says. "If they really want to make changes to the culture, they need to start by putting more women in the C-suite so that it's not this… old boys' club," says Candido. CEO TURNOVER "I can't say I've seen a greater interest on the policy side for employers, which is funny because I've seen a heightened interest from the complainants." Martin Sheard, owner of Tevlin Gleadle Curtis 14.7% Overall turnover rate for North American CEOs in 2018 3.4% M&A turnover rate (out of 14.7%) 2.9% Forced turnover rate (out of 14.7%) 8.3% Planned turnover rate (out of 14.7%) Source: PwC Strategy&