Page 67 - An Indispensible Resource for Being a Credible Activist

You may at times have to educate colleagues and others in the company at various lev-
els about this concept. In addition, you might need to ask your company to make it clear to
supervisors what retaliation is and is not; and you personally may have to be the person to
design and present such a training. A good idea is to implement protective measures so that
HR approves all discipline to ensure that HR is a firewall preventing any retaliatory disci-
pline and using those near misses as opportunities to educate angry supervisors who are
tempted to retaliate as to why it is unwise and potentially costly to do so. You should inform
supervisors that retaliation charges and lawsuits can be successful for plaintiffs even if the
original complaint was untrue or unfounded. Retaliation awards to plaintiffs and punitive
damages for employers who are found guilty of this are often greater than awards or puni-
tive damages for initial complaints of harassment or discrimination if those are found to
have occurred.

❱❱ COMPLIANCE

As a credible activist, you will want to ensure that your workplace genuinely intends to be
compliant with EEO laws and all other employment laws; otherwise, you will have a very
difficult time doing your job ethically and well. Most HR professionals have as part of their
job description to “ensure that the company is compliant with all relevant employment
laws.” However, if your leadership is not really on board with this and is only paying lip
service to these laws, that will be communicated to the staff in various ways and there will
be unlawful behavior, which you will wind up either learning of and handling, or not learn-
ing of for various reasons.
In companies wherein these laws are not taken seriously, this unfortunate condition can
emerge in several ways. Unlawful harassment and discrimination may run rampant, employ-
ees may be too fearful to make complaints to those who are charged with receiving them,
or employees may make complaints thinking their complaints will be properly and thor-
oughly investigated only to learn that they are not and are promptly ignored, not taken seri-
ously, or otherwise not handled properly.
The HR credible activist finds him- or herself in a difficult position if it becomes obvi-
ous that he or she is working in an organization or company that does not take EEO and
other employment laws seriously. The credible activist may decide to simply look for another
job and then give a polite and untrue reason for resigning, he or she may tell the company
truthfully why he or she is resigning, or he or she may remain there and do his or her best
to educate others about the company’s legal compliance responsibilities as well as the
personal liability to which certain leadership and HR professionals are exposed if not in
compliance with various employment laws. (Sample memos in HR Tools at the end of this
chapter, on pages 60–69, address some ways to communicate about personal and company
liability to a leadership who does not take EEO and other employment laws seriously.)
The HR employee who chooses to silently collude with a leadership that does not take
seriously EEO and other employment laws is taking very serious risks in terms of personal
liability, abandonment of professional ethics, abuse of employee trust, and company liabil-
ity. The unfortunate reality is that HR employees who fail to live up to their ethical obliga-
tions may do so out of fear of the repercussions they might face if they were to speak up:

50 The H R Toolkit