Saker: Should HR protect employees, not the company, in sex harassment cases?

AM's regular columnist Professor Jim Saker, director of the Centre for Automotive Management at Loughborough University's business school and president of the Institute of the Motor Industry, shares his thoughts about the damage done to companies by HR departments that put corporate damage-limitation ahead of victim welfare.

It is a major concern that an organisation such as the CBI should be in the news lately with accusations of sexual harassment and assaults being made. This comes at the same time as when Dominic Rabb resigned from the Government having been found guilty of bullying and intimidation.

At the same time as these high profile and well publicised events, I've learned of reports from within our industry of similar happenings.

This builds on the findings of the IMI’s EDI (equity, diversity and inclusion) Taskforce which showed that our sector is far from blameless when it comes to misogyny and racism. A critical issue that has emerged from these is the questionable role of HR departments in such incidents.

When you investigate many of the cases of sexual harassment and racism the victims have often reported the matter to either their line manager (if they are not the perpetrator) or the HR department. The problem appears to be how the complaint is handled.

The evidence shows that in many cases the HR Department sees its role as supressing any complaint as opposed to actually addressing the problem.

In doing so the behaviour of the perpetrators is not addressed and the complainant is left feeling that they are not being taking seriously. This breeds a culture of tolerance of unacceptable behaviour with women being on the receiving end of treatment.

I was in an email discussion with Julia Muir of the Automotive 30% Club over this issue and she recounted a number of incidents when women had contacted her after not being taken seriously by HR departments. Julia told of occasions when she went to the senior directors of companies who firstly didn’t know of the incidents that were occurring and were appalled that it was happening on their watch.

There is a need for transparency particularly around sexual harassment and racist behaviour.

The senior people in organisations should encourage victims to speak out about their treatment. What may be regarded as a joke to the perpetrator if allowed to continue breeds a culture of abuse which in some cases moves from being verbal to outright sexual abuse and sadly in some cases rape and criminal prosecution.

This is too serious a matter to be taken lightly. HR departments should have a duty of care to protect the employees in the workplace not to protect the company from potentially bad publicity.

Ironically if the situation is not addressed more bad publicity will follow but at the expense of the victim and, in the CBI’s case, their reputation.