The brave or the foolhardy?

After four years involved as a volunteer support person for employees dragged into “fact-finding” inquiries, which were nerve-racking for the employee who dared to make a disclosure, I have a theory for the seemingly cowardly behaviour of both the employee’s superiors and peers.

It is that the disclosing employee has dishonoured the “code” - which is that none of us should bite the hand that feeds all of us.

Each of my “clients” described their experience following a disclosure as the worst of their lives. Think about that one: you report illegal behaviour and your reward is the worst experience of your life.

As the matter stretches from weeks to months, and then to years, my people exhibited many physical signs of distress, including skin rashes, irritable bowel, insomnia, unexplained cold sweats and panic attacks, loss of appetite, social withdrawal, loss of income due to over-extended sick leave, loss of libido in the marriage, angry outbursts at the children and guilt that their family was worried about their predicament.

A support person is not an advocate. His function is to silently sit in on “fact-finding inquiries” involving the employee who faces more than one “fact-finder” at the table. His mere presence guarantees that there will be no gross intimidation of the employee. He is also able to later objectively discuss with the highly stressed employee what was actually said at the meeting.

However, at the “fact-finding” inquiry, the employee making the disclosure is unable to support their case with documentation as the holding of unauthorised documentation, including photocopies, is a sackable offence. And, as the culture has produced only one employee courageous enough to make the disclosure, there will be no other witnesses willing to sign a supporting statement.

The organisation can then twist the employee's verbal evidence around anyway it likes. And, with no support from his wimpish peers, it is easy to paint the lone accuser as a misfit.

The disclosing employee who makes the mistake of deciding to follow through on the allegation wherever it takes him, assumes that right must win in the end. My observation is that in the real world, right does not win in the end - the best argument does - regardless of whether it is right or wrong.

My observation is that once the discloser is seen not as a champion for the public’s interest, but as a boat-rocker, he feels betrayed by almost everybody. When all conversation stops when he enters the staff room he knows that there is a fear of being seen to be friendly with him. The more insecure of his colleagues may even buckle under pressure (real or imagined) into volunteering statements which contradict or seriously water-down the claims made by the boat-rocker.

So, the “fact-finders” who paint the employee of exceptional integrity as a misfit, in a culture where self-survival is the priority objective, are making an accurate assessment after all. He is a misfit!

After sitting in on many meetings, I cynically concluded:

• that the sanctified term “team player” really meant accepting the current standards no matter how ineffective, wasteful or even illegal they were;
• that commitments to openness and accountability were no more than ink on paper appearing in the mission statements in glossy annual reports;
• that the formal disclosure mechanism was not primarily designed to correct the aberrant behaviour of the accused, but to correct the boat-rocking behaviour of the accuser; and
• that the organisation wins because it has all the time its needs to wait for the frustrated accuser to become emotionally exhausted.

I call myself a cynic here because there is a factor which must be considered. The lack of action on a disclosure may not be due so much to a conspiracy as to the huge inertia which all large organisations intrinsically have. Contributing to the inertia is the extent of the demoralisation felt throughout the entire staff establishment. When self-survival becomes the dominant mood, there is less interest in what should be done and more acceptance of what is actually done.

If you are witnessing entrenched illegal behaviour in your workplace and you feel driven to make a disclosure, you should say to yourself: “I am a misfit here.” That might save you from self-destructing.

Footnotes

(1) Following relentlessly bad media coverage, all organisations today have a policy requiring every employee to make a disclosure to an in-house disclosures officer if the employee has knowledge of:

• aberrant personal behaviour;
• mismanagement; or
• dangerous incompetence.

There now should be no need for any employee to blow the whistle - that is, take the grievance to the media. That’s the theory. But, the disclosures officer needs his paypacket and is on a career path. While processing the allegation, what is the chance that he will put the employee’s interest (to not suffer as a consequence of making the disclosure) above the organisation’s interest? (One can imagine the reaction to an allegation made by a nurse’s aide against a staff specialist.)

So, what would be in the organisation’s interest? It could be that the alleged wrongdoer is highly trained and very difficult to replace if dismissed. It could be that the wrongdoer is one of the few middle managers in an organisation which cannot pay its bills, who always keeps to budget. It could even be that the processing of a disclosure which will be watertight enough to keep the accused person’s lawyers away, simply creates more work for a management which is overwhelmed already.

(2) Intuition tells almost all employees who have made a failed internal disclosure not to take the matter to the media. So, what drives the rare grieving employee to take that giant leap into the unknown? It is anger - and anger is always dangerous - as nurse Nola Fraser discovered when innocents were hurt due to the media and the leader of the opposition exploited the situation she exposed, and a panicking premier overreacted.

(3) For the public employee, there are the Ombudsman and ICAC. Why should the employee ever consider the media? But, that extra layer of appeal is still part of the system - and far more likely than not to simply add to the problem. More months of delays, more infuriatingly stupid bureaucracy, increased hostility from management because these instruments have now been pulled in - and more stress.

(4) Social isolation and exceptionally close surveillance following a disclosure is discrimination. The victim is, therefore, entitled to seek union support. The union response was so ineffective for my “clients” that my feeling was that the union believes that if an employee goes out of his way to risk his livelihood by rocking the boat, then he is on his own until a formal move is made to dismiss him.

(5) For many years now, parts of the public sector have had consumer committees. These have been set up purely to promote an image of openness. The members have no access to staff - very few of whom know the committees exist. Until the community determines that it will vigorously probe the management of public services with its own experts, it will continue to get the services it deserves.