The brave or the foolhardy?

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.