Recent years have seen a strong tide towards protection of employee rights in employment tribunals, a heightened awareness of any form of discrimination, the damaging effects of throwaway remarks.
Now more tribunals are signalling the need for balance. If we keep on going this way, they say, we’ll have a culture of hyper-sensitivity in workplaces – where one thoughtless comment, a well-intentioned joke, could be used as grounds for legal action. A culture where bosses, managers and staff are frozen by the need to be ‘correct’ in every word used. Where conversations feel monitored, becoming stilted and limited to the bare essentials. Conversations on a ‘need-to-have’ basis.
The tribunal was dealing with a number of complaints of harassment from an employee against a former employer. The legal firm had offered her a role at their head office in Switzerland which she had turned down for ‘personal reasons’. Bosses asked her why she had turned the position down: “You are not married, you don’t have children and you do not have a boyfriend”, and went on to talk about ‘tolerance’ of a lesbian staff member in the Swiss office.
Subsequently when she looked for a promotion she was turned down because it was argued she was “not performing at the same level as the group’s senior legal counsel”. The employee complained that she had been subject to sex discrimination, sexual harassment or harassment related to sexual orientation by perception, along with age discrimination and age-related harassment.
The complaints were dismissed. The comments were “unfortunate and awkward”, but, it was argued, shouldn’t be seen as constituting discrimination. The verdict is generally accepted as being another example of how employers can defend themselves against claims of discrimination — but is not yet considered to be a legal precedent.
Does this mean HRDs should be understanding when it comes to managers who make occasional slips, who might be guilty of ‘careless talk’?
Employers need to demonstrate they are meeting their side of the deal, that they are trying to create a balance between being open in dealing with difficult situations, while at the same time having empathy for employees. The cultural climate is encouraging more awareness of grounds for discrimination and less tolerance to thoughtless use of language and humour: HRDs have to be ready to prove they are being pro-active and leading on the delivery of best practice.
That means moving beyond education on discrimination and cultural awareness. Understanding that there are sensitivities doesn’t mean an ability to talk about them and deal with individual people and cases in professional ways. It means equipping managers in particular — but also staff in general — with the skills to deal with difficult conversations. Conversation skills are expected as a given among staff in a professional setting. But in reality the skills involved with managing difficult situations, in dealing with conflict, differences in personality etc, are in short supply.
It’s what we call ‘Conversational Integrity’, the package of skills that leads to confidence and ability, an awareness of the role of conversations in relationships, how the quality of conversations changes dynamics, and the huge influence they have on the outcome of situations, particularly those most difficult of conversations where we’re most likely to want to rush to the easiest conclusions. This includes ‘situational awareness’, the essential practice of ‘curiosity’, ‘reflective listening’, ‘empathy’, and ‘self awareness’ – so not just listening outwardly but inwardly, how your own ‘inner state’ is impacting on the flow of the conversation.
Critically, having Conversational Integrity means being able to create a sense of safety, so that employees feel able to be entirely open rather than giving expected answers, following the path of least resistance. Making sure people have the self-awareness and confidence to take part in sensitive and awkward conversations without becoming bullish, defensive or skirting around the core issues.
The future of good employee relations is built on these foundations. At an organisation-wide level the best employers will be helping to create an environment where there are good conversations on a daily basis, where staff trust their managers and colleagues enough to be open about concerns, and the typical kinds of misunderstandings are defused and more serious issues are picked up and dealt with. Offering mediation and neutral assessment is another channel for dealing with problems at a more informal level. And this needs to be backed up by structures and processes of expertise in Employee Relations and Industrial Relations that work together. In this way, employee activism becomes something other than a threat, it’s just a healthy expression of the personality of an organisation, breathing new life into a culture, promoting change and evolution.
