August 7, 2024 • 46 mins
"Human Resources (HR) are here to help." That’s what most people will be told when they join an organisation - that Human Resources are the first port of call if they should ever witness or experience workplace incivility, bullying and harassment.
But how does it feel when someone “on the inside” in HR, has to go through their own process and raise a bullying complaint?
In this first episode of a two part series, we look at the experience of a committed HR professional who found themselves on the wrong side of bullying - and became a target themselves.
It’s a personal story of dedication and good intentions that turned into complaint process failures, delays, investigative mistakes, psychological and physical illness, and institutional betrayal.
Everything that an organisation’s response to workplace bullying shouldn’t be.
Would you like to know more?
Visit priceperrott.com for this episode's show notes, and become a Price Perrott subscriber for exclusive access to additional insights and content.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
If you're looking for a podcast to inspire and inform, to take you beyond bullet points
with practical insights that'll help you make a difference in your work and life, then
you've come to the right place. I'm Dr. Jason Price, and this is Life at the Sharp End.
(00:26):
For me, every incident of bullying or harassment or any negative workplace act that causes
harm to people is simply a reflection of the leadership values that are practiced.
(00:46):
Human resources are here to help. That's what most people will be told when they join an
organisation, that human resources are the first port of call if they should ever witness
or experience workplace incivility, bullying or harassment. But research surveys amongst
people who've experienced workplace harm, and independent reviews of workplace culture
(01:09):
reveal a common theme that, for many people, HR isn't trusted. That it has an inherent
conflict of interest because its role is to look after the interests of the organisation.
Is that a fair assessment? Maybe not, but it is the reality for many people who experience
workplace bullying. What's it like from HR's perspective, and how does it feel when someone
(01:33):
on the inside in HR has to go through their own process and raise a bullying complaint?
In this episode, we look at the experience of a committed HR professional, someone dedicated
to helping the targets of workplace bullying and improving the way that their organisation
worked, who found themselves on the wrong side of bullying and became a target themselves.
(01:56):
It's a personal story of dedication and good intentions that turned into complaint process
failures, delays, investigative mistakes, psychological and physical illness and institutional
betrayal. Everything that an organisation's response to workplace bullying shouldn't be.
(02:16):
It's a case with credibility because it's been through an independent investigation
and the allegations were upheld. It's a real world story that illustrates the wider findings
of research studies and highlights the need for organisations to go beyond well-meaning
announcements, posters on the wall about zero tolerance, and to fix the problems that leave
(02:39):
targets of bullying suffering physical and psychological harm. It leaves them sometimes
without a job whilst the perpetrators of bullying remain in their roles or they're removed
undercover to go and harm others. There are many lessons to be learnt from Jane's story
that you'll hear now. I'm calling her Jane, which isn't her real name because like many
(03:02):
of the people who experience the harm of workplace bullying, the risk of retaliation means she
still wants to speak anonymously and we've disguised her voice. This is Jane's story
of life at the sharp end of tackling workplace bullying in an organisation where she herself
became bullied by the organisation.
(03:29):
Jane, you're somebody with quite an extensive background in human resources. How long have
you been an HR professional and what made you want to go into HR in the first place as a career?
Well, I've been in HR for pretty much my whole career, which is now nearing 30 years.
And of course, my position has changed over those years to be more progressively responsible.
(03:52):
Well, since 2015, I've been very focused on psychological health and safety in the workplace.
And that focus sort of found me more than anything, because in Canada, where I live,
there was a national standard that had been published in 2013 around it. And just in the
(04:14):
work that I did as an HR professional, because I was involved generally in high conflict
situations, it just seemed to me there had to be a better way. And when I read the standard
or started to hear about it, it really resonated. And it was about looking at the systemic sort
(04:38):
of issues that might be contributing to conflicts and just unrest in the workplace. So what was the
root cause? And that's sort of how my brain works. And I could resonate with it. I found it had a
really good message with it. And it was something that instantly appealed to me. And so I started
(05:00):
to dig into that in my career. So that would be where I've spent most of the last bit of time
in my journey is focusing in on the national standard and high conflict situations.
And that's a really interesting area to talk about, isn't it? Because part of the role of HR
is to support both the organization that's supporting managers in the organization, but also
(05:22):
people who come to you when there's a high conflict situation or their experience with workplace
incivility. What changes do you think that standard has promoted from the situation that
you've experienced earlier in your career? I'd probably summarize it the most for me, at least
it's a preventive versus rather than a reactive focus. So if we can prevent issues from happening
(05:47):
in the first place, it will be far more successful than reacting to issues that have already happened
because once they've happened, relationships are generally fractured. And it just the repair work
is just far more significant and tends to not produce a good outcome for people.
(06:08):
And what are the sort of situations you've encountered which lead to conflict existing?
And what did you learn that can maybe help to address some of these?
Where work isn't clearly defined, it creates a really big problem for people. So for me,
it was generally looking and wanting to find where the conflict was happening
(06:29):
and then deal with those issues. And frankly, some of the stuff that I was starting to discover
was that a lot of the issues are around culture. A lot of the issues stem to leadership practices,
the effectiveness of managers. And again, it's not about thinking that the manager
(06:52):
or leaders are the only responsible ones for this issue, but they do their values and how they
choose to lead and how they choose to manage the work makes a significant difference in people's
lives. And we have to as organizations and as HR practitioners, we have to have confidence
in the abilities of managers to lead people effectively, to know that the people in our
(07:17):
charge, so to speak, are being cared for. And in support of managers as well, I think there's often
not enough time in their day and their workload has not been designed in such a way that people
responsibilities are, where they've been trained properly or where they're given the proper time
(07:40):
to spend with employees to work through issues. People are not just experts because they've got
a job title. It actually takes anybody going through a development career and wanting to
gain new skills and involvement. You have to have some degree of training and education, don't you?
And what were you able to do as an HR professional to look at and understand the picture you were
(08:04):
seeing through data and information? And did you present any of that back to leadership at all?
Yeah, I did. And I would think, you know, for me, the distinction, or I guess a line, and maybe more
the focus of my story will be around, I think there can be a lot of good progress up to a certain
level. And then once the power and control exceeds that of HR, then there's the influence that you
(08:34):
can have. And the ability to make the necessary change diminishes accordingly. So you can have a
lot of success, for example, when you're working, let's say, alongside union partners and things
like that as management, from a management perspective, and having good relationships
with unions, you can solve a lot of problems within an organization when you have good relationships.
(08:57):
But when the impact of conflict exceeds the power of HR, and is not about union employees,
but is about management or people who are not protected by unions, then it's a whole different
dynamic. And I think that's the one that has captured my interest the most, is what happens
(09:20):
when the power differential is so strong, or there's such a difference, like there's
where the employee that's impacted has minimal ability to influence the outcome. And there's
minimal support after a certain level. At least that's been my experience.
And HR has a role that people are told when you join a company, yep, if you've got any problems,
(09:45):
you can come to HR, we're here to support both you and the organization. So people who are
members of a union have got some backup and somebody fighting on their side, but somebody
coming along who's got a problem in the workplace, we're told to go to HR. And how well do you think
HR are actually empowered to help people in the organization when there's an inherent power
(10:07):
imbalance that we see through cases of workplace incivility, bullying and harassment?
It's a really good question. And I think obviously, it's all contextual. And I like to imagine the
organizations out there that are doing a stellar job of this. And those are the organizations
I applaud, and I know they exist. And I know there's where they have the values of the
(10:31):
organization aren't just professed, but they're actually lived. And there is a significant amount
of care that goes into the well being of the workforce. And so in those organizations, I think
HR has probably all the influence and support that they need. And they're probably a well
(10:53):
resourced team. And even if they're not a well resourced team, they have the support of top
leaders who are equally concerned when behavior shows up that is out of step with what the
corporation knows will produce a good outcome for people and for the organization. And we're
not talking about those organizations, unfortunately, though. So where bullying and harassment live,
(11:21):
organizations tend not to be, their cultures just mirror the behavior. The behavior simply mirrors
the culture that allows it. So for me, every incident of bullying, or harassment, or any
negative workplace act that causes harm to people is simply a reflection of the leadership values
(11:44):
that are practiced. So I think in my, you know, 30 years in HR now, my focus is with top leaders,
because they have to want to provide an environment that's safe and legislatively across the world,
that's becoming more onerous. But legislation has minimal capacity, I think, to create the
(12:10):
accountability that we're all hoping for in the bullying and harassment space, because there has
to be a will for organizations. So the culture is truly reflective of how successful HR practitioners
are in their role. I mean, that's a point that's made by leadership gurus and leadership speakers
(12:32):
across the world, isn't it? That it's not about what you say as a leader. People are watching
what you do and your actions. And integrity comes from the old definition, isn't it? Integrity is
what you do when nobody's watching. But the consequences of that flow on. So for leaders,
actually being able to put into practice what you speak and do it consistently with integrity
(12:56):
is the key to creating that positive culture. Right. I love what you said there, because I think
that is the best definition of culture that I tend to. It's what people do when no one's looking.
Absolutely. Now, obviously, you've been very familiar with the processes for workplace
bullying and harassment and what people would go through if they come to you. Now, your experience,
(13:19):
you had to try and use those own processes yourself. What happened that led to you
becoming a target of workplace bullying in your role in HR?
Well, I don't know if I can answer the question, you know, what led to me being targeted,
because the answer to that is simply resides with the person who chose to bully me,
(13:43):
along with the organization leadership that allowed it to continue. What motivated me
to raise my concern is probably a two pronged, maybe multi pronged answer.
So, well, I can only talk about my experience of the journey, but I imagine for many,
(14:04):
the story that sort of catches you off guard, you didn't see it coming. You can't believe that this
has happened to you would all be part of my story in some way, shape or form. But I think if I go
back to my HR values, or what I was doing as a professional, is I was encountering these cases,
like people were coming to me with their concerns. I was working very hard to address their concerns,
(14:31):
working very hard to create effective solutions, which required, you know,
a lot of trust building, and making sure that people felt supported and cared for,
making sure that I was hearing all perspectives. And then, at the time, leveraging what I benefited
(14:52):
from, which was the ear, so to speak, of some senior leaders who we made a lot of progress.
But in some aspects, or in some areas of the organization, the progress wasn't as good.
And you could see the difference, like, and the difference simply amounted to the leadership
values that were in place. And so I started to push back fairly hard on some of what I was
(15:18):
experiencing as an HR professional and bringing forward issues that I was trying to resolve,
that were not, in my view, being resolved effectively. So after a while, the behaviors
that I was trying to support people from encountering were behaviors that I experienced.
(15:39):
And I have to be honest, it was only when my health started to fail. And by that, I mean,
not even me necessarily acknowledging it, but family and friends and other people who would say,
you're just, you know, you're not the same person you used to be. And I finally reached a point that
(16:00):
I had no choice but to raise my concerns, because I knew what I was experiencing wasn't okay.
And because of my knowledge of HR processes, I knew what I was supposed to do. My empathy goes
out to so many people who don't know what to do. And they have that added layer of confusion,
(16:22):
because they're experiencing this behavior. And they're trying to learn the processes at the same
time. My story, again, I feel it's a bit of a double edged sword, because I know what the
processes are supposed to do. I reached a point, it was like this value base driven decision,
that how can I profess to be a steward of the system, when I know I'm experiencing this behavior,
(16:49):
and I know people know about it. And I know nothing's getting done about it.
So prior to raising my formal complaint, over a period of four years, informally raised my
concerns. And of course, those informal concerns were not addressed. And then I decided that
I'm going to hold myself accountable to follow the same process that I asked other employees to
(17:17):
follow. So when people would come to me for advice, and I would pull out our policies,
and I would say to them, these are the steps that we need to follow. I needed to be willing
to walk through that process myself. So I did. We'll come back to what happened next. Because
that's the key question that people were wanting to hear as well. But it's a really important point
(17:38):
that you've just made there that when you've got a set of policies and procedures and organizations
put them together, you're an HR professional who knows how this should work. And actually,
the mechanisms may well be in place on paper that would be fair and impartial and look after
the interests of everybody and provide support and so on. What was the real experience when you
(18:00):
actually went through it? I think the word that will strike the most is very seldom do policies
contain specific timelines. But they generally refer to a concept of timeliness. And they may
provide some guidance around what that needs to look like. My experience resulted in a very
(18:21):
untimely response. And there's probably a few things that go into that as well. But factually,
what I could say is from the date I raised my complaint, it took well, not that I'm counting,
but I was counting at the time, because it was becoming a very long wait. It took over 180 days
(18:42):
for my investigation to commence. So that's a lot of days. Half a year, roughly, isn't it?
That's half a year for them to even start. Yeah. And so that was an interesting,
that's the wrong word. It was a harmful process to have a delay for that long. And in hindsight,
(19:05):
now that I have done a lot of research and a lot of reading on this topic,
these are common things. These are not things that organizations need to be told,
or that they need to be advised of that asking someone to wait 180 days. So there can be
extenuating circumstances, but at least the process needs to have been commenced.
And things like that need to happen. But timeliness is a really important issue. And
(19:31):
in the context of timeliness, there's the word trauma will also come up time and time again,
I think now, because they're intertwined. And the longer a process gets drawn out,
the more harm it causes, and the more repair work that's going to be needed.
And there needs to be some sensitivity, or at least more sensitivity than what I know experienced
(19:54):
in terms of moving forward, effectively, supportively for all parties, the complainant,
respondent, the witnesses, so many people get impacted in an organization. But timeliness
needs to be not, it's not just a checklist. So timeliness becomes a value. It's more than just
(20:17):
a number of days, it's an actual value in terms of the support that an organization chooses to
provide to employees who are raising concerns. As you said, there are frequently circumstances
as an investigation progresses, where there's a balance between timeliness and fairness,
because people who are affected by it may need some time and support before they can pull their
(20:41):
story together and maybe talk to an investigator. But the situation you just talked about is
virtually six months to even start the investigation. What communication took
place between you as the complainant and the organization, the people looking at what was
happening during that almost six month period? Well, it's a really good question. So I know for
(21:02):
me, my experience would have been that, you know, I raised my formal complaint,
and I mentioned earlier that I was already unwell at the time that I raised it. So I
tried to stay in the workplace, probably for about a month and a half, while I was waiting to
determine what steps were going to be taken. Then I made a decision that I needed to step away
(21:23):
for my health. But the whole time, I made it clear that I was available to attend any investigation,
any meetings, and there was no medical issue, so to speak, that would prevent me from participating
in a process. So I think that's an important piece as well, because sometimes there are medical issues
(21:44):
that prevent people from participating in a process, which would then create in context,
like it would lengthen the time that's required for investigation. But in my story, that wasn't
the case. I was fully prepared and willing and had the proper support to proceed. And then when
no action was taken to advance to an investigation stage, I actually had to raise yet another
(22:10):
complaint and started, pulled out another policy within my organization, which was around a whistleblower
policy, which was to say, the process to investigate my complaint is not being followed,
at least not in a timely manner. And the process was unclear to me. So I, where I'd want leaders
(22:31):
and others to reflect is how hard that is for people who are in that position. So they're already
experienced the negative workplace behavior. They've chosen to exercise and raise a concern,
like in accordance with your policy. And then the experience that they have, which there's likely
very, to be honest, in my case, there was not, like I was communicating with people I needed to
(22:57):
communicate with, my manager and others on a regular basis. But there was this constant,
you know, we haven't decided yet, we're still working on it. But there's a point that it
reaches that when your health is failing, and I was very clear to highlight each time that my health
was failing, and continued to, it was not getting better, getting worse. And when no action was taken,
(23:23):
to then have to raise yet another complaint, inside another corporate policy,
you feel the angst as a person. So you, you feel this sense that by speaking up,
you're being silenced in some ways through an action. And this is the part for my story that
(23:45):
has taken me, and to this day takes me, and I really need to think through what's happening
for me and like, physiologically and everything else, because there is a real reaction from a
health perspective, that this situation creates, and it creates harm. And it took me a long time
(24:08):
to accept that word, like that I've experienced a traumatic workplace event.
But I don't think that way anymore. Like this fully is, workplace inaction is an abusive practice.
And leaders that aren't in good faith, with a lot of rigor, dealing with these issues in
(24:30):
a timely manner, it causes harm. And that harm extends to families. It's impacted my family,
and it extends to society at large, because people who are no longer productive inside of the
workplace, there's a ripple effect into communities. It's like, it's a leadership responsibility
(24:53):
to ensure, like you said, Jason, a great word, fairness in process.
And I think, you know, that fairness has to tackle, there's always a balance with these things,
if there's a genuine reason why something is taking time, either whether that's because
a participant needs some time to prepare their things, it's equally as harmful to, you know,
(25:17):
you hear examples where people have said, well, it's got to be done in a week. So we'll just do
it in a week, whether or not people are ready. Well, that has a different effect on people.
So awareness of the trauma informed process, and the implications on people who are taking part
is part of that. But there has to be that communication along the way of telling people,
(25:38):
why is that happening? Because there's usually an answer, or there's always an answer to why
it's happening. Somebody has made a decision somewhere, or there's a genuine valid reason
why, and that communicating that helps people who are going through a process to understand
what the situation is, and why there may or may not be a delay. But six months before anything
(25:59):
even started, and not giving you a reason for doing that is certainly the unreasonable end
of the spectrum. My experience was that it was an unreasonable end of the spectrum, for sure.
And, you know, just like before we move on to the next thing, I want to highlight there too,
sometimes the reason for the delay can be from an organization's perspective.
(26:21):
For example, they may be under-resourced, they may be going through things, they may be having,
you know, it could be vacation time, it could be a whole host of reasons that are preventing
something from moving forward. But organizations need to have a backup plan for those things.
And, you know, workplace issues don't just arrive when the supports are always available. And,
(26:49):
you know, back to my HR practitioners and my support of the professionals that are stewards
of these systems, they are a chronically under-resourced area in many organizations.
And the lack of resources can't be the reason to not move forward on significant workplace
issues that are impacting people. And that in itself, if you go back to your
(27:13):
former role as the HR manager, that's a really good example of if you're in a situation where
you're not given the budget or the resource, say, you know, to put in an external investigator,
for example, you can start something quickly because you can outsource it and bring in
external investigators. And we'll be talking to some of those in future podcasts about how
that process works. But you need to have a budget for that because that's going to require
(27:36):
many tens of thousands of, insert your currency unit here. If as an HR department or a complaints
team that's looking after this, you don't have the flexibility to do that, well, then you're
between a rock and a hard place, aren't you? You've got people going through complaints who need
something to happen quickly, but equally you are simply being prevented or you don't have the
(27:59):
resources to do that. Or you know that it'll come back on you as a manager later on if you do. So
you're absolutely right. It requires a supportive leadership to be able to make sure
that if we want investigations to happen and we want complaints or resolutions or investigations
to happen in a timely manner, that those have to be resourced based on the number of cases that
(28:20):
are coming in. And that number may not be what you had planned for in your budget. And if it goes up,
then resources need to follow the cases. And time resources too. Like I think it quite often
turns out to be just be, you know, good people not having sufficient time to address concerns.
And, you know, so that's something I have a ton of empathy for and I respect and understand
(28:46):
the impact that causes, but we need to find solutions to that problem because asking people
who have been impacted to wait is not, is certainly not a fair process.
So 180 days to get an investigation started when your investigation presumably did start,
(29:06):
what happened next? Once it did start, it went quite quickly. For context, you know, my
situation was bullying that I was reporting was at a more senior level than me and a senior level
in the organization. In the process, as everyone will know, it gets boiled down to a number of
allegations that get made and then a finding is made on each allegation. So a significant portion
(29:33):
of my allegations were substantiated. And most importantly, that they were in violation of the
company's policy for harassment, as well as occupational health and safety legislation.
It met the threshold and definition that fell under from an OH&S perspective.
So how did that make you feel at the end? You've waited all this time and presumably there's
(30:00):
a reaction from the organization. Somebody was defending their position from the
other side through that process. And then you have a finding that says your allegations
are upheld. Your case was valid and you were the target of workplace bullying.
What was the impact on you having waited so long to hear that outcome?
(30:21):
I'm going to step back just slightly before I get to that answer as well, is just to recognize too
that the investigation process itself, it requires people to relive, to retell. When you delay,
it prevents healing. But even if there was no delay, organizations need to be prepared for
people's reactions inside of that process and they need to hire properly trained investigators. So
(30:45):
you mentioned trauma informed, that has to be mission critical. And I would say I was fortunate,
I actually had. That happened in my case. So the investigative process was still hard,
but I felt that it was handled by the investigator well. The finding, it's like, I guess, a sense of
(31:08):
relief because you have all this angst that's building up as you're waiting because you don't
know what's going to happen. And I've had this, you know, come back and I just, I'll share this
now just because it's something I struggle with. So I've heard the phrase that, you know,
the investigation findings being in your favor as a complainant. I want to emphasize there is never
(31:34):
a case of harassment or bullying that is in someone's favor. So a finding that that's what
you experienced is not a celebration. It's not, it's not a moment of, like, at least for me,
it wasn't that. It was like, what I experienced was real. It was, I guess, validating in the sense that
(31:58):
I guess at the time for me, it made the journey worthwhile because it felt like, okay,
at least now, you know, we can move forward. Like, so I had held out so much hope up to that point,
even though there was all these delays and everything else, even when I raised the
(32:19):
complaint, my concern was always about improving our systems and making them better. So the finding
from my investigation, I guess, gave me some, an immediate sense of, okay, now we're going to be
ready to roll up our sleeves and do something about it because getting a finding of harassment
(32:40):
doesn't happen every day. Like it's, and even the number of cases that people choose to raise,
like, again, research would tell us these are like small percentages now of the actual real
issue. So I guess I feel fortunate that I, and that's just even the raw, I just struggle with
trying to find the right word. It's a, it's a messy space in my head around this. So I was optimistic
(33:03):
though, at the time when I was sort of sat down and told that, that the reports had been received,
and this is generally what was found. There was a lot of, I guess, humility, maybe I guess would
be the word I would use at that point, or at least a lot of supportive words that were used at the
(33:25):
time to allow me to maybe breathe a little bit more easily to feel like, okay, we're going to
move forward. It'll be okay. Things will start just to resume or get back to normal.
(33:45):
Yeah. And, and I truly felt that and felt a lot of anxiety and sort of fall away,
but it was very short-lived. So you say it was short-lived and you're absolutely right. It's
not a celebration of anything because it's a confirmation that the behavior you experienced
and that you have put forward was actually real. There's somebody independently has looked at this
(34:12):
and decided on the balance of probabilities that your case was correct. The argument that you put
forward that that behavior did happen to you. So yeah, that sense of relief and removing the
uncertainty is something that I'm sure anybody who's experienced it might be feeling. You've
talked about the kind of hope that now we can move forward and we can go on a path to getting
(34:36):
things back to normal. Is that what happened? Short answer, no. And so what happened after that
is, again, there was a period of delay. So typically organizations will look to formally
conclude an investigation. And especially when there's a finding that substantiates harassment,
(34:58):
there needs to be some steps that are rightly followed to ensure the problem doesn't reemerge.
And so again, what ended up happening was there was another lengthy delay to conclude the
investigation, which means like formally communicating to me the outcome. The investigator
(35:20):
in their recommendations came back saying that I receive a written apology from the organization
about the process delays that I experienced because it was their opinion that it caused harm
and that they engage these restoration services. And I really to this day don't understand.
I don't think that, again, timeliness was important. And when you have an investigation
(35:42):
report that says this is what happened, I don't think it's hard to summarize and move forward
with people from that point. But it took another two months to conclude the investigation.
On what basis, what were you told as the complainant who'd had their
allegations upheld for the reason for that delay?
(36:03):
There really was no reason provided. I was tasked to another person to support.
So there was some action happening that was intended to support my return to work.
All I will say with that is that those actions also were unhelpful. And maybe I'll dig into
(36:26):
that more later. I'm not sure. But to actually conclude in writing the investigation, truly,
there's no explanation that makes sense in my HR brain that would account for a two-month delay
beyond the investigation report. But bottom line, that's what happened.
And again, I raised concerns throughout the process. And again, imagine you were told that,
(36:50):
OK, this is the finding. All I wanted to do was get back to work. That's all I wanted to do,
get back into the workplace, be part of my team again. And then when those delays happen again,
it compounds the problem. So now it's like your brain just stops functioning well at some point.
(37:10):
And I know it's hard for me to talk about these pieces because it's a time I have to recall when
you're the least healthy that you've ever been, at least for me, that I can recall in my professional
career. And having to fight so hard to get to that point, and now all of a sudden having to fight
again to get it to conclude. When it did conclude and I received formal documentation,
(37:38):
all the allegations that were communicated to me that were substantiated were not acknowledged.
So there is an independent report that's been presented that the organization has
acknowledged has been completed. And there were allegations that were upheld,
but the organization refused to acknowledge those upheld allegations to you?
(38:01):
In writing. Yes, they were acknowledged verbally, but not in writing. And
that alone became a significant source of trauma for me, because and probably the most severe
of anything, because in context, bullying behavior only exists when an organization allows it.
(38:25):
And to prevent it from happening, especially when it did happen, you have to acknowledge it happened.
And then when you when you share that it did, and then you withhold a critical piece for someone
who's gone through that journey, it becomes like it well, it's in my definition is a gaslighting,
because I knew it to be true, I could read it in black and white, I was given information. So
(38:47):
not only was I verbally told, but I was given information that shows me in writing. But it
wasn't from the organization that was confirming that in writing. And I don't know what happened
to me on the day. But I remember it just having this really, like it was like a switch went off
in my head, when I was given this written letter that left off the most significant allegation
(39:16):
that was impactful to me, but also to others in terms of the creation of a toxic work environment.
So to have that not acknowledged, when I knew it to be true, became a significant source of
it is gaslighting. And from a place that jarred me as an HR professional, because
(39:37):
I was a steward of this system. And I there was the dissonance I felt between
what we were professing versus what was happening. And the degree of isolation I was feeling at that
time, because now I've been out of the workforce for a really long time, you really do start to
lose your sense of self. And it's a very dark time. That's all I can say. It's a very dark
(40:02):
time in my life. And going forward, my goal is to the best of my ability to continue to move forward
in conversations like this today. Like people who file complaints who choose to which are probably
small numbers still, you know, potentially are hoping or thinking that if you get this outcome,
that valid your experience and allows you to maybe start healing. But when that whole experience is
(40:28):
that then invalidated, something significant happened to me in terms of my capacity to
contribute effectively anymore, to many things. And a very hard part is my family.
You can hear the, the impact that these kinds of things have on people as we're, you know,
(40:51):
did anybody say sorry, even informally? when the information was first shared with me,
there was a sorry, and that that gave me a lot of hope, right? It gave me a lot of faith and hope.
The written apology was never provided that once. And then they made the respondents apologise to me,
which came by email, very insincere and cause further harm, because the person who had caused
(41:14):
all this harm was very flippant in their delivery by email, and not one person in the organisation,
there was two people, like three people on copy with the email, not one person checked in to see
if I was okay. But that sorry meant nothing after no action followed. So, you know, I wish I could
say that, you know, you go through these processes, and if you get this outcome, this is what you can
(41:35):
expect to happen. My experience is that it didn't happen. So it just became a whole other set of
mental anguish that I needed to somehow figure out what to do and how to navigate.
I did reach the point that my health failed further. After that, I tried to appeal,
(41:56):
I basically called it out immediately, as soon as it was presented to me, I asked directly about
why is this not being acknowledged. And it was just met with no comment. My only option was
to continue to raise a complaint. And again, you can't like there's only so many complaints people
can raise. And people may question why would you keep going? Why would you just not leave? Why would
(42:22):
you not attend to your health? Because a lot of things will say, well, just leave like your health
matters. And I agree with that. But I also know it's not that easy. And some people can't leave
for financial reasons. Some people have mortgages to pay, where leaving becomes a very difficult
choice. Even if it's the best thing for your health, when people are unwell, that's not the
(42:44):
first thing you see, right? So it takes time and every person's journey is unique. And every person
has their own story to tell and it matters. But the reason or the rationale for them doing what
they do is it's a combination of a whole bunch of things. It's your life experiences all coming
together. But at that time, I recall it just hitting me like in a way I can't even properly
(43:09):
describe. And my health rapidly declined. And my sense of, I guess, inner peace was thrown
definitely out the window. And to this day, I still have to figure out how to recover
fully from that experience because it caused that much harm. And I think my only motivation
(43:33):
to continue at that point, and it was my job, even if I wanted to leave, where was I going to go?
What we've heard in Jane's story so far illustrates the snowball effect that workplace
(43:54):
bullying and the investigation processes associated can have on the health and well-being
of people affected. We've just heard Jane wasn't ready to give up her career. Unfortunately,
Jane's situation isn't unique. It happens to targets of workplace incivility, bullying and
harassment far too frequently. Yet this happened to someone from HR who knows how the complaint
(44:19):
processes work and how things should be done. If you're an executive leader, a decision maker,
a manager with responsibilities for people, or an HR professional, take a look now at your
own organisation and reflect on what you've heard of Jane's experiences. Ask yourself how you'd be
feeling if you found yourself in the same situation as her, because this story tells us that you're
(44:44):
not immune to workplace bullying either. Are you leading from the front, by example, or is your
organisation causing the kind of harm that Jane experienced to people who have the courage to
stand up and say enough is enough? What did Jane's organisation do next? In the next episode of Life
at the Sharp End, you'll hear how they responded to her upheld allegations and find out whether
(45:09):
Jane has been able to return to her workplace safely, having finally received the upheld
investigation outcome. I hope you found this episode interesting and you'll find the show
notes at priceperrott.com. That's with a double R and a double T. Would you like to know more?
You can sign up to stay informed about a whole range of other content that goes beyond bullet
(45:34):
points to help you succeed in achieving a high-performing workplace culture. Don't forget
to subscribe wherever you found this podcast, leave a review and tell all your friends and
colleagues what you learned from today's episode. I'm Dr Jason Price. Join me again next time for
more insights from Life at the Sharp End.
If you're looking for a podcast to inspire and inform, to take you beyond bullet points
with practical insights that'll help you make a difference in your work and life, then
you've come to the right place. I'm Dr. Jason Price, and this is Life at the Sharp End.
(00:26):
For me, every incident of bullying or harassment or any negative workplace act that causes
harm to people is simply a reflection of the leadership values that are practiced.
(00:46):
Human resources are here to help. That's what most people will be told when they join an
organisation, that human resources are the first port of call if they should ever witness
or experience workplace incivility, bullying or harassment. But research surveys amongst
people who've experienced workplace harm, and independent reviews of workplace culture
(01:09):
reveal a common theme that, for many people, HR isn't trusted. That it has an inherent
conflict of interest because its role is to look after the interests of the organisation.
Is that a fair assessment? Maybe not, but it is the reality for many people who experience
workplace bullying. What's it like from HR's perspective, and how does it feel when someone
(01:33):
on the inside in HR has to go through their own process and raise a bullying complaint?
In this episode, we look at the experience of a committed HR professional, someone dedicated
to helping the targets of workplace bullying and improving the way that their organisation
worked, who found themselves on the wrong side of bullying and became a target themselves.
(01:56):
It's a personal story of dedication and good intentions that turned into complaint process
failures, delays, investigative mistakes, psychological and physical illness and institutional
betrayal. Everything that an organisation's response to workplace bullying shouldn't be.
(02:16):
It's a case with credibility because it's been through an independent investigation
and the allegations were upheld. It's a real world story that illustrates the wider findings
of research studies and highlights the need for organisations to go beyond well-meaning
announcements, posters on the wall about zero tolerance, and to fix the problems that leave
(02:39):
targets of bullying suffering physical and psychological harm. It leaves them sometimes
without a job whilst the perpetrators of bullying remain in their roles or they're removed
undercover to go and harm others. There are many lessons to be learnt from Jane's story
that you'll hear now. I'm calling her Jane, which isn't her real name because like many
(03:02):
of the people who experience the harm of workplace bullying, the risk of retaliation means she
still wants to speak anonymously and we've disguised her voice. This is Jane's story
of life at the sharp end of tackling workplace bullying in an organisation where she herself
became bullied by the organisation.
(03:29):
Jane, you're somebody with quite an extensive background in human resources. How long have
you been an HR professional and what made you want to go into HR in the first place as a career?
Well, I've been in HR for pretty much my whole career, which is now nearing 30 years.
And of course, my position has changed over those years to be more progressively responsible.
(03:52):
Well, since 2015, I've been very focused on psychological health and safety in the workplace.
And that focus sort of found me more than anything, because in Canada, where I live,
there was a national standard that had been published in 2013 around it. And just in the
(04:14):
work that I did as an HR professional, because I was involved generally in high conflict
situations, it just seemed to me there had to be a better way. And when I read the standard
or started to hear about it, it really resonated. And it was about looking at the systemic sort
(04:38):
of issues that might be contributing to conflicts and just unrest in the workplace. So what was the
root cause? And that's sort of how my brain works. And I could resonate with it. I found it had a
really good message with it. And it was something that instantly appealed to me. And so I started
(05:00):
to dig into that in my career. So that would be where I've spent most of the last bit of time
in my journey is focusing in on the national standard and high conflict situations.
And that's a really interesting area to talk about, isn't it? Because part of the role of HR
is to support both the organization that's supporting managers in the organization, but also
(05:22):
people who come to you when there's a high conflict situation or their experience with workplace
incivility. What changes do you think that standard has promoted from the situation that
you've experienced earlier in your career? I'd probably summarize it the most for me, at least
it's a preventive versus rather than a reactive focus. So if we can prevent issues from happening
(05:47):
in the first place, it will be far more successful than reacting to issues that have already happened
because once they've happened, relationships are generally fractured. And it just the repair work
is just far more significant and tends to not produce a good outcome for people.
(06:08):
And what are the sort of situations you've encountered which lead to conflict existing?
And what did you learn that can maybe help to address some of these?
Where work isn't clearly defined, it creates a really big problem for people. So for me,
it was generally looking and wanting to find where the conflict was happening
(06:29):
and then deal with those issues. And frankly, some of the stuff that I was starting to discover
was that a lot of the issues are around culture. A lot of the issues stem to leadership practices,
the effectiveness of managers. And again, it's not about thinking that the manager
(06:52):
or leaders are the only responsible ones for this issue, but they do their values and how they
choose to lead and how they choose to manage the work makes a significant difference in people's
lives. And we have to as organizations and as HR practitioners, we have to have confidence
in the abilities of managers to lead people effectively, to know that the people in our
(07:17):
charge, so to speak, are being cared for. And in support of managers as well, I think there's often
not enough time in their day and their workload has not been designed in such a way that people
responsibilities are, where they've been trained properly or where they're given the proper time
(07:40):
to spend with employees to work through issues. People are not just experts because they've got
a job title. It actually takes anybody going through a development career and wanting to
gain new skills and involvement. You have to have some degree of training and education, don't you?
And what were you able to do as an HR professional to look at and understand the picture you were
(08:04):
seeing through data and information? And did you present any of that back to leadership at all?
Yeah, I did. And I would think, you know, for me, the distinction, or I guess a line, and maybe more
the focus of my story will be around, I think there can be a lot of good progress up to a certain
level. And then once the power and control exceeds that of HR, then there's the influence that you
(08:34):
can have. And the ability to make the necessary change diminishes accordingly. So you can have a
lot of success, for example, when you're working, let's say, alongside union partners and things
like that as management, from a management perspective, and having good relationships
with unions, you can solve a lot of problems within an organization when you have good relationships.
(08:57):
But when the impact of conflict exceeds the power of HR, and is not about union employees,
but is about management or people who are not protected by unions, then it's a whole different
dynamic. And I think that's the one that has captured my interest the most, is what happens
(09:20):
when the power differential is so strong, or there's such a difference, like there's
where the employee that's impacted has minimal ability to influence the outcome. And there's
minimal support after a certain level. At least that's been my experience.
And HR has a role that people are told when you join a company, yep, if you've got any problems,
(09:45):
you can come to HR, we're here to support both you and the organization. So people who are
members of a union have got some backup and somebody fighting on their side, but somebody
coming along who's got a problem in the workplace, we're told to go to HR. And how well do you think
HR are actually empowered to help people in the organization when there's an inherent power
(10:07):
imbalance that we see through cases of workplace incivility, bullying and harassment?
It's a really good question. And I think obviously, it's all contextual. And I like to imagine the
organizations out there that are doing a stellar job of this. And those are the organizations
I applaud, and I know they exist. And I know there's where they have the values of the
(10:31):
organization aren't just professed, but they're actually lived. And there is a significant amount
of care that goes into the well being of the workforce. And so in those organizations, I think
HR has probably all the influence and support that they need. And they're probably a well
(10:53):
resourced team. And even if they're not a well resourced team, they have the support of top
leaders who are equally concerned when behavior shows up that is out of step with what the
corporation knows will produce a good outcome for people and for the organization. And we're
not talking about those organizations, unfortunately, though. So where bullying and harassment live,
(11:21):
organizations tend not to be, their cultures just mirror the behavior. The behavior simply mirrors
the culture that allows it. So for me, every incident of bullying, or harassment, or any
negative workplace act that causes harm to people is simply a reflection of the leadership values
(11:44):
that are practiced. So I think in my, you know, 30 years in HR now, my focus is with top leaders,
because they have to want to provide an environment that's safe and legislatively across the world,
that's becoming more onerous. But legislation has minimal capacity, I think, to create the
(12:10):
accountability that we're all hoping for in the bullying and harassment space, because there has
to be a will for organizations. So the culture is truly reflective of how successful HR practitioners
are in their role. I mean, that's a point that's made by leadership gurus and leadership speakers
(12:32):
across the world, isn't it? That it's not about what you say as a leader. People are watching
what you do and your actions. And integrity comes from the old definition, isn't it? Integrity is
what you do when nobody's watching. But the consequences of that flow on. So for leaders,
actually being able to put into practice what you speak and do it consistently with integrity
(12:56):
is the key to creating that positive culture. Right. I love what you said there, because I think
that is the best definition of culture that I tend to. It's what people do when no one's looking.
Absolutely. Now, obviously, you've been very familiar with the processes for workplace
bullying and harassment and what people would go through if they come to you. Now, your experience,
(13:19):
you had to try and use those own processes yourself. What happened that led to you
becoming a target of workplace bullying in your role in HR?
Well, I don't know if I can answer the question, you know, what led to me being targeted,
because the answer to that is simply resides with the person who chose to bully me,
(13:43):
along with the organization leadership that allowed it to continue. What motivated me
to raise my concern is probably a two pronged, maybe multi pronged answer.
So, well, I can only talk about my experience of the journey, but I imagine for many,
(14:04):
the story that sort of catches you off guard, you didn't see it coming. You can't believe that this
has happened to you would all be part of my story in some way, shape or form. But I think if I go
back to my HR values, or what I was doing as a professional, is I was encountering these cases,
like people were coming to me with their concerns. I was working very hard to address their concerns,
(14:31):
working very hard to create effective solutions, which required, you know,
a lot of trust building, and making sure that people felt supported and cared for,
making sure that I was hearing all perspectives. And then, at the time, leveraging what I benefited
(14:52):
from, which was the ear, so to speak, of some senior leaders who we made a lot of progress.
But in some aspects, or in some areas of the organization, the progress wasn't as good.
And you could see the difference, like, and the difference simply amounted to the leadership
values that were in place. And so I started to push back fairly hard on some of what I was
(15:18):
experiencing as an HR professional and bringing forward issues that I was trying to resolve,
that were not, in my view, being resolved effectively. So after a while, the behaviors
that I was trying to support people from encountering were behaviors that I experienced.
(15:39):
And I have to be honest, it was only when my health started to fail. And by that, I mean,
not even me necessarily acknowledging it, but family and friends and other people who would say,
you're just, you know, you're not the same person you used to be. And I finally reached a point that
(16:00):
I had no choice but to raise my concerns, because I knew what I was experiencing wasn't okay.
And because of my knowledge of HR processes, I knew what I was supposed to do. My empathy goes
out to so many people who don't know what to do. And they have that added layer of confusion,
(16:22):
because they're experiencing this behavior. And they're trying to learn the processes at the same
time. My story, again, I feel it's a bit of a double edged sword, because I know what the
processes are supposed to do. I reached a point, it was like this value base driven decision,
that how can I profess to be a steward of the system, when I know I'm experiencing this behavior,
(16:49):
and I know people know about it. And I know nothing's getting done about it.
So prior to raising my formal complaint, over a period of four years, informally raised my
concerns. And of course, those informal concerns were not addressed. And then I decided that
I'm going to hold myself accountable to follow the same process that I asked other employees to
(17:17):
follow. So when people would come to me for advice, and I would pull out our policies,
and I would say to them, these are the steps that we need to follow. I needed to be willing
to walk through that process myself. So I did. We'll come back to what happened next. Because
that's the key question that people were wanting to hear as well. But it's a really important point
(17:38):
that you've just made there that when you've got a set of policies and procedures and organizations
put them together, you're an HR professional who knows how this should work. And actually,
the mechanisms may well be in place on paper that would be fair and impartial and look after
the interests of everybody and provide support and so on. What was the real experience when you
(18:00):
actually went through it? I think the word that will strike the most is very seldom do policies
contain specific timelines. But they generally refer to a concept of timeliness. And they may
provide some guidance around what that needs to look like. My experience resulted in a very
(18:21):
untimely response. And there's probably a few things that go into that as well. But factually,
what I could say is from the date I raised my complaint, it took well, not that I'm counting,
but I was counting at the time, because it was becoming a very long wait. It took over 180 days
(18:42):
for my investigation to commence. So that's a lot of days. Half a year, roughly, isn't it?
That's half a year for them to even start. Yeah. And so that was an interesting,
that's the wrong word. It was a harmful process to have a delay for that long. And in hindsight,
(19:05):
now that I have done a lot of research and a lot of reading on this topic,
these are common things. These are not things that organizations need to be told,
or that they need to be advised of that asking someone to wait 180 days. So there can be
extenuating circumstances, but at least the process needs to have been commenced.
And things like that need to happen. But timeliness is a really important issue. And
(19:31):
in the context of timeliness, there's the word trauma will also come up time and time again,
I think now, because they're intertwined. And the longer a process gets drawn out,
the more harm it causes, and the more repair work that's going to be needed.
And there needs to be some sensitivity, or at least more sensitivity than what I know experienced
(19:54):
in terms of moving forward, effectively, supportively for all parties, the complainant,
respondent, the witnesses, so many people get impacted in an organization. But timeliness
needs to be not, it's not just a checklist. So timeliness becomes a value. It's more than just
(20:17):
a number of days, it's an actual value in terms of the support that an organization chooses to
provide to employees who are raising concerns. As you said, there are frequently circumstances
as an investigation progresses, where there's a balance between timeliness and fairness,
because people who are affected by it may need some time and support before they can pull their
(20:41):
story together and maybe talk to an investigator. But the situation you just talked about is
virtually six months to even start the investigation. What communication took
place between you as the complainant and the organization, the people looking at what was
happening during that almost six month period? Well, it's a really good question. So I know for
(21:02):
me, my experience would have been that, you know, I raised my formal complaint,
and I mentioned earlier that I was already unwell at the time that I raised it. So I
tried to stay in the workplace, probably for about a month and a half, while I was waiting to
determine what steps were going to be taken. Then I made a decision that I needed to step away
(21:23):
for my health. But the whole time, I made it clear that I was available to attend any investigation,
any meetings, and there was no medical issue, so to speak, that would prevent me from participating
in a process. So I think that's an important piece as well, because sometimes there are medical issues
(21:44):
that prevent people from participating in a process, which would then create in context,
like it would lengthen the time that's required for investigation. But in my story, that wasn't
the case. I was fully prepared and willing and had the proper support to proceed. And then when
no action was taken to advance to an investigation stage, I actually had to raise yet another
(22:10):
complaint and started, pulled out another policy within my organization, which was around a whistleblower
policy, which was to say, the process to investigate my complaint is not being followed,
at least not in a timely manner. And the process was unclear to me. So I, where I'd want leaders
(22:31):
and others to reflect is how hard that is for people who are in that position. So they're already
experienced the negative workplace behavior. They've chosen to exercise and raise a concern,
like in accordance with your policy. And then the experience that they have, which there's likely
very, to be honest, in my case, there was not, like I was communicating with people I needed to
(22:57):
communicate with, my manager and others on a regular basis. But there was this constant,
you know, we haven't decided yet, we're still working on it. But there's a point that it
reaches that when your health is failing, and I was very clear to highlight each time that my health
was failing, and continued to, it was not getting better, getting worse. And when no action was taken,
(23:23):
to then have to raise yet another complaint, inside another corporate policy,
you feel the angst as a person. So you, you feel this sense that by speaking up,
you're being silenced in some ways through an action. And this is the part for my story that
(23:45):
has taken me, and to this day takes me, and I really need to think through what's happening
for me and like, physiologically and everything else, because there is a real reaction from a
health perspective, that this situation creates, and it creates harm. And it took me a long time
(24:08):
to accept that word, like that I've experienced a traumatic workplace event.
But I don't think that way anymore. Like this fully is, workplace inaction is an abusive practice.
And leaders that aren't in good faith, with a lot of rigor, dealing with these issues in
(24:30):
a timely manner, it causes harm. And that harm extends to families. It's impacted my family,
and it extends to society at large, because people who are no longer productive inside of the
workplace, there's a ripple effect into communities. It's like, it's a leadership responsibility
(24:53):
to ensure, like you said, Jason, a great word, fairness in process.
And I think, you know, that fairness has to tackle, there's always a balance with these things,
if there's a genuine reason why something is taking time, either whether that's because
a participant needs some time to prepare their things, it's equally as harmful to, you know,
(25:17):
you hear examples where people have said, well, it's got to be done in a week. So we'll just do
it in a week, whether or not people are ready. Well, that has a different effect on people.
So awareness of the trauma informed process, and the implications on people who are taking part
is part of that. But there has to be that communication along the way of telling people,
(25:38):
why is that happening? Because there's usually an answer, or there's always an answer to why
it's happening. Somebody has made a decision somewhere, or there's a genuine valid reason
why, and that communicating that helps people who are going through a process to understand
what the situation is, and why there may or may not be a delay. But six months before anything
(25:59):
even started, and not giving you a reason for doing that is certainly the unreasonable end
of the spectrum. My experience was that it was an unreasonable end of the spectrum, for sure.
And, you know, just like before we move on to the next thing, I want to highlight there too,
sometimes the reason for the delay can be from an organization's perspective.
(26:21):
For example, they may be under-resourced, they may be going through things, they may be having,
you know, it could be vacation time, it could be a whole host of reasons that are preventing
something from moving forward. But organizations need to have a backup plan for those things.
And, you know, workplace issues don't just arrive when the supports are always available. And,
(26:49):
you know, back to my HR practitioners and my support of the professionals that are stewards
of these systems, they are a chronically under-resourced area in many organizations.
And the lack of resources can't be the reason to not move forward on significant workplace
issues that are impacting people. And that in itself, if you go back to your
(27:13):
former role as the HR manager, that's a really good example of if you're in a situation where
you're not given the budget or the resource, say, you know, to put in an external investigator,
for example, you can start something quickly because you can outsource it and bring in
external investigators. And we'll be talking to some of those in future podcasts about how
that process works. But you need to have a budget for that because that's going to require
(27:36):
many tens of thousands of, insert your currency unit here. If as an HR department or a complaints
team that's looking after this, you don't have the flexibility to do that, well, then you're
between a rock and a hard place, aren't you? You've got people going through complaints who need
something to happen quickly, but equally you are simply being prevented or you don't have the
(27:59):
resources to do that. Or you know that it'll come back on you as a manager later on if you do. So
you're absolutely right. It requires a supportive leadership to be able to make sure
that if we want investigations to happen and we want complaints or resolutions or investigations
to happen in a timely manner, that those have to be resourced based on the number of cases that
(28:20):
are coming in. And that number may not be what you had planned for in your budget. And if it goes up,
then resources need to follow the cases. And time resources too. Like I think it quite often
turns out to be just be, you know, good people not having sufficient time to address concerns.
And, you know, so that's something I have a ton of empathy for and I respect and understand
(28:46):
the impact that causes, but we need to find solutions to that problem because asking people
who have been impacted to wait is not, is certainly not a fair process.
So 180 days to get an investigation started when your investigation presumably did start,
(29:06):
what happened next? Once it did start, it went quite quickly. For context, you know, my
situation was bullying that I was reporting was at a more senior level than me and a senior level
in the organization. In the process, as everyone will know, it gets boiled down to a number of
allegations that get made and then a finding is made on each allegation. So a significant portion
(29:33):
of my allegations were substantiated. And most importantly, that they were in violation of the
company's policy for harassment, as well as occupational health and safety legislation.
It met the threshold and definition that fell under from an OH&S perspective.
So how did that make you feel at the end? You've waited all this time and presumably there's
(30:00):
a reaction from the organization. Somebody was defending their position from the
other side through that process. And then you have a finding that says your allegations
are upheld. Your case was valid and you were the target of workplace bullying.
What was the impact on you having waited so long to hear that outcome?
(30:21):
I'm going to step back just slightly before I get to that answer as well, is just to recognize too
that the investigation process itself, it requires people to relive, to retell. When you delay,
it prevents healing. But even if there was no delay, organizations need to be prepared for
people's reactions inside of that process and they need to hire properly trained investigators. So
(30:45):
you mentioned trauma informed, that has to be mission critical. And I would say I was fortunate,
I actually had. That happened in my case. So the investigative process was still hard,
but I felt that it was handled by the investigator well. The finding, it's like, I guess, a sense of
(31:08):
relief because you have all this angst that's building up as you're waiting because you don't
know what's going to happen. And I've had this, you know, come back and I just, I'll share this
now just because it's something I struggle with. So I've heard the phrase that, you know,
the investigation findings being in your favor as a complainant. I want to emphasize there is never
(31:34):
a case of harassment or bullying that is in someone's favor. So a finding that that's what
you experienced is not a celebration. It's not, it's not a moment of, like, at least for me,
it wasn't that. It was like, what I experienced was real. It was, I guess, validating in the sense that
(31:58):
I guess at the time for me, it made the journey worthwhile because it felt like, okay,
at least now, you know, we can move forward. Like, so I had held out so much hope up to that point,
even though there was all these delays and everything else, even when I raised the
(32:19):
complaint, my concern was always about improving our systems and making them better. So the finding
from my investigation, I guess, gave me some, an immediate sense of, okay, now we're going to be
ready to roll up our sleeves and do something about it because getting a finding of harassment
(32:40):
doesn't happen every day. Like it's, and even the number of cases that people choose to raise,
like, again, research would tell us these are like small percentages now of the actual real
issue. So I guess I feel fortunate that I, and that's just even the raw, I just struggle with
trying to find the right word. It's a, it's a messy space in my head around this. So I was optimistic
(33:03):
though, at the time when I was sort of sat down and told that, that the reports had been received,
and this is generally what was found. There was a lot of, I guess, humility, maybe I guess would
be the word I would use at that point, or at least a lot of supportive words that were used at the
(33:25):
time to allow me to maybe breathe a little bit more easily to feel like, okay, we're going to
move forward. It'll be okay. Things will start just to resume or get back to normal.
(33:45):
Yeah. And, and I truly felt that and felt a lot of anxiety and sort of fall away,
but it was very short-lived. So you say it was short-lived and you're absolutely right. It's
not a celebration of anything because it's a confirmation that the behavior you experienced
and that you have put forward was actually real. There's somebody independently has looked at this
(34:12):
and decided on the balance of probabilities that your case was correct. The argument that you put
forward that that behavior did happen to you. So yeah, that sense of relief and removing the
uncertainty is something that I'm sure anybody who's experienced it might be feeling. You've
talked about the kind of hope that now we can move forward and we can go on a path to getting
(34:36):
things back to normal. Is that what happened? Short answer, no. And so what happened after that
is, again, there was a period of delay. So typically organizations will look to formally
conclude an investigation. And especially when there's a finding that substantiates harassment,
(34:58):
there needs to be some steps that are rightly followed to ensure the problem doesn't reemerge.
And so again, what ended up happening was there was another lengthy delay to conclude the
investigation, which means like formally communicating to me the outcome. The investigator
(35:20):
in their recommendations came back saying that I receive a written apology from the organization
about the process delays that I experienced because it was their opinion that it caused harm
and that they engage these restoration services. And I really to this day don't understand.
I don't think that, again, timeliness was important. And when you have an investigation
(35:42):
report that says this is what happened, I don't think it's hard to summarize and move forward
with people from that point. But it took another two months to conclude the investigation.
On what basis, what were you told as the complainant who'd had their
allegations upheld for the reason for that delay?
(36:03):
There really was no reason provided. I was tasked to another person to support.
So there was some action happening that was intended to support my return to work.
All I will say with that is that those actions also were unhelpful. And maybe I'll dig into
(36:26):
that more later. I'm not sure. But to actually conclude in writing the investigation, truly,
there's no explanation that makes sense in my HR brain that would account for a two-month delay
beyond the investigation report. But bottom line, that's what happened.
And again, I raised concerns throughout the process. And again, imagine you were told that,
(36:50):
OK, this is the finding. All I wanted to do was get back to work. That's all I wanted to do,
get back into the workplace, be part of my team again. And then when those delays happen again,
it compounds the problem. So now it's like your brain just stops functioning well at some point.
(37:10):
And I know it's hard for me to talk about these pieces because it's a time I have to recall when
you're the least healthy that you've ever been, at least for me, that I can recall in my professional
career. And having to fight so hard to get to that point, and now all of a sudden having to fight
again to get it to conclude. When it did conclude and I received formal documentation,
(37:38):
all the allegations that were communicated to me that were substantiated were not acknowledged.
So there is an independent report that's been presented that the organization has
acknowledged has been completed. And there were allegations that were upheld,
but the organization refused to acknowledge those upheld allegations to you?
(38:01):
In writing. Yes, they were acknowledged verbally, but not in writing. And
that alone became a significant source of trauma for me, because and probably the most severe
of anything, because in context, bullying behavior only exists when an organization allows it.
(38:25):
And to prevent it from happening, especially when it did happen, you have to acknowledge it happened.
And then when you when you share that it did, and then you withhold a critical piece for someone
who's gone through that journey, it becomes like it well, it's in my definition is a gaslighting,
because I knew it to be true, I could read it in black and white, I was given information. So
(38:47):
not only was I verbally told, but I was given information that shows me in writing. But it
wasn't from the organization that was confirming that in writing. And I don't know what happened
to me on the day. But I remember it just having this really, like it was like a switch went off
in my head, when I was given this written letter that left off the most significant allegation
(39:16):
that was impactful to me, but also to others in terms of the creation of a toxic work environment.
So to have that not acknowledged, when I knew it to be true, became a significant source of
it is gaslighting. And from a place that jarred me as an HR professional, because
(39:37):
I was a steward of this system. And I there was the dissonance I felt between
what we were professing versus what was happening. And the degree of isolation I was feeling at that
time, because now I've been out of the workforce for a really long time, you really do start to
lose your sense of self. And it's a very dark time. That's all I can say. It's a very dark
(40:02):
time in my life. And going forward, my goal is to the best of my ability to continue to move forward
in conversations like this today. Like people who file complaints who choose to which are probably
small numbers still, you know, potentially are hoping or thinking that if you get this outcome,
that valid your experience and allows you to maybe start healing. But when that whole experience is
(40:28):
that then invalidated, something significant happened to me in terms of my capacity to
contribute effectively anymore, to many things. And a very hard part is my family.
You can hear the, the impact that these kinds of things have on people as we're, you know,
(40:51):
did anybody say sorry, even informally? when the information was first shared with me,
there was a sorry, and that that gave me a lot of hope, right? It gave me a lot of faith and hope.
The written apology was never provided that once. And then they made the respondents apologise to me,
which came by email, very insincere and cause further harm, because the person who had caused
(41:14):
all this harm was very flippant in their delivery by email, and not one person in the organisation,
there was two people, like three people on copy with the email, not one person checked in to see
if I was okay. But that sorry meant nothing after no action followed. So, you know, I wish I could
say that, you know, you go through these processes, and if you get this outcome, this is what you can
(41:35):
expect to happen. My experience is that it didn't happen. So it just became a whole other set of
mental anguish that I needed to somehow figure out what to do and how to navigate.
I did reach the point that my health failed further. After that, I tried to appeal,
(41:56):
I basically called it out immediately, as soon as it was presented to me, I asked directly about
why is this not being acknowledged. And it was just met with no comment. My only option was
to continue to raise a complaint. And again, you can't like there's only so many complaints people
can raise. And people may question why would you keep going? Why would you just not leave? Why would
(42:22):
you not attend to your health? Because a lot of things will say, well, just leave like your health
matters. And I agree with that. But I also know it's not that easy. And some people can't leave
for financial reasons. Some people have mortgages to pay, where leaving becomes a very difficult
choice. Even if it's the best thing for your health, when people are unwell, that's not the
(42:44):
first thing you see, right? So it takes time and every person's journey is unique. And every person
has their own story to tell and it matters. But the reason or the rationale for them doing what
they do is it's a combination of a whole bunch of things. It's your life experiences all coming
together. But at that time, I recall it just hitting me like in a way I can't even properly
(43:09):
describe. And my health rapidly declined. And my sense of, I guess, inner peace was thrown
definitely out the window. And to this day, I still have to figure out how to recover
fully from that experience because it caused that much harm. And I think my only motivation
(43:33):
to continue at that point, and it was my job, even if I wanted to leave, where was I going to go?
What we've heard in Jane's story so far illustrates the snowball effect that workplace
(43:54):
bullying and the investigation processes associated can have on the health and well-being
of people affected. We've just heard Jane wasn't ready to give up her career. Unfortunately,
Jane's situation isn't unique. It happens to targets of workplace incivility, bullying and
harassment far too frequently. Yet this happened to someone from HR who knows how the complaint
(44:19):
processes work and how things should be done. If you're an executive leader, a decision maker,
a manager with responsibilities for people, or an HR professional, take a look now at your
own organisation and reflect on what you've heard of Jane's experiences. Ask yourself how you'd be
feeling if you found yourself in the same situation as her, because this story tells us that you're
(44:44):
not immune to workplace bullying either. Are you leading from the front, by example, or is your
organisation causing the kind of harm that Jane experienced to people who have the courage to
stand up and say enough is enough? What did Jane's organisation do next? In the next episode of Life
at the Sharp End, you'll hear how they responded to her upheld allegations and find out whether
(45:09):
Jane has been able to return to her workplace safely, having finally received the upheld
investigation outcome. I hope you found this episode interesting and you'll find the show
notes at priceperrott.com. That's with a double R and a double T. Would you like to know more?
You can sign up to stay informed about a whole range of other content that goes beyond bullet
(45:34):
points to help you succeed in achieving a high-performing workplace culture. Don't forget
to subscribe wherever you found this podcast, leave a review and tell all your friends and
colleagues what you learned from today's episode. I'm Dr Jason Price. Join me again next time for
more insights from Life at the Sharp End.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.