Breaking down barriers to reporting in the workplace?

Future-proofing your business means understanding and mitigating risks. The cost of disengagement and attrition for median-sized companies is estimated to be $228m a year according to McKinsey, posing a huge risk.

Understanding where those risks exist relies on your ability to hear from your people and break down the barriers to reporting that might be preventing them from speaking up.

Continue reading to understand what the barriers to reporting in the workplace are and how to overcome them.

Understanding the barriers to reporting

To activate positive change in your organisation, you need to know what is taking place. And to achieve that, you need to create an environment where anybody who experiences culture damaging behaviours is both willing and able to share those with you.

Yet a number of factors can create barriers to reporting, including:

• A confusing or complex reporting process
• Fear of retaliation, including exclusion, harassment or being labelled a troublemaker
• Lack of trust in management taking the report seriously
• The belief that no action will be taken
• A feeling that reporting won’t help them deal with what they’ve been through
• Worries over how their data will be used in the future

One of the biggest barriers to reporting is a lack of anonymity. According to our own research, only 36% of people who have witnessed or experienced problematic behaviour at work have reported it – but for 62% of employees, anonymous reporting platforms would make them much more likely to say something.

This signals the need for an anonymous reporting system for employees that encourages them to speak up.

The importance of encouraging incident reporting

More reports might sound like a daunting goal to strive for. Surely a good organisation doesn’t want to have more reports of unacceptable or culture damaging behaviours? Well, the reality is, these behaviours are happening whether they’re being reported or not.

Great, productive, profitable organisations understand that the more you know about the behaviours that run a risk of impacting your culture, the more that can be done to impact the issues before they become hard-to-address problems.

So, more reporting can benefit your business by fostering a culture of openness, action and accountability. Effective incident reporting also plays a significant role in risk management by identifying trends, preventing future incidents and ensuring regulatory compliance; particularly with the new Workers’ Protection amendment to the Equality Act.

Crucially, it also helps organisations learn from past mistakes and continuously improve their processes, enhancing your overall response strategy and organisational resilience.

Implementing a reporting system for employees

When it comes to implementing a reporting system, embedding the platform is the easiest part. For it to be effective and sustainable, you need to consult with your employees and foster organisational-wide alignment on goals and objectives.

6 steps to implementing a reporting system

Investing in anonymous harassment reporting is the best thing you can do to remove barriers to reporting and promote a safer workplace. Here are some steps you can take:

1. Choose the right platform. Ensure that it’s user-friendly, accessible and secure. Consider factors like cost, features and scalability.
2. Develop clear reporting procedures so that people understand what to report, and so that those handling reports know the correct response and case management process.
3. Train and educate employees on how to use the reporting system effectively and respond to reports sensitively.
4. Promote awareness around the reporting system’s benefits to ensure people know what it is, why it exists and how to access it.
5. Regularly monitor and evaluate the system’s effectiveness, making adjustments as needed based on feedback and data.
6. Address reports promptly and take appropriate action to prevent future incidents and foster trust.

The Culture Shift platform is used by more than 100 organisations in the UK and is accessible to over two million people. It’s been designed and built to not only provide valuable insights to HR and Culture teams, but to break down some of the main barriers to reporting, like confidentiality.

What are the top features of an effective anonymous reporting system?

A good platform is one that people are going to use. When bringing anonymous reporting into the workplace, it’s important that the platform you choose has the right features; like the ability to report anonymously, effective case management tools, sophisticated data analytics and so on.

Culture Shift’s platform ticks all these boxes. It’s also packed with enterprise-level security features, such as:

• Two-factor authentication
• Single sign-on
• End-to-end encryption
• GDPR compliance
• Cyber Essentials certification
• ISO certification

We think an effective reporting system consists of three key areas:

1. An accessible and user-friendly reporting platform
2. An intuitive case management system that enhances performance
3. Robust analytics for monitoring trends at an aggregated level

A reporting platform, however, is just the catalyst for change. Beyond the ability to optimise your report form with researched and data-driven templates and functionality like audit trails and in-product case messaging, you need to understand what culture transformation within your business looks like at a strategic level.

This is where we come in. Our success managers work with each of our partners to monitor and improve your performance. Through our dedicated Success team and our Culture Transformation team, we partner with you on your journey to building a culture where people belong, or feel safe to speak up if they don’t.

We offer sophisticated data analysis so that organisations can understand culture damaging behaviours at an aggregated level. But at Culture Shift, software and service go hand in hand, connecting you with networks of people to support you in taking targeted, data-driven action to reduce the likelihood of further events.

Overcoming specific barriers to reporting

Barrier #1: Fear of retaliation

Organisations should clearly establish non-retaliation policies, create a culture that supports reporting and enforce policies consistently. This includes providing multiple reporting options and ensuring employees understand their rights and protections.

Barrier #2: Lack of trust in the reporting process

This involves transparent communication about how reports are handled. You must also ensure confidentiality and demonstrate that reports lead to meaningful action.

Using specialised software is pivotal here. You need to be able to streamline the reporting process and provide employees with a secure and consistent platform.

Barrier #3: Awareness and training

Regular training and awareness campaigns are vital to educate employees about the reporting process, the support available to them and the importance of reporting.

This can include ongoing comms and messaging or more in-depth training sessions on the types of behaviours people should feel comfortable speaking up about.

How to encourage a culture of openness and support

Role of leadership in promoting openness

Leadership plays a pivotal role in fostering a culture of openness and support. You can think of leadership at multiple levels; those accountable for defining culture, and those responsible for supporting cultures to thrive.

All leaders must model appropriate behaviour by acknowledging the importance of incident reporting and demonstrating a commitment to addressing issues promptly and fairly.

By promoting transparency and accountability, leaders set the tone for a workplace culture that prioritises safety, inclusion and continuous improvement. In turn, this empowers employees to speak up.

Leaders that are accountable to culture must ensure they respond appropriately to behaviours and trends that negatively impact culture. That means using data to take action and doing so with the intention of upholding your commitment to culture.

Leaders who are responsible for helping positive cultures thrive must ensure they are recognising both positive and negative behaviours. They must actively listen to those that choose to speak up.

Software from Culture Shift can further facilitate this by providing a secure and accessible platform for reporting incidents, fostering trust in the reporting process and enabling leadership to respond effectively to employee feedback.

Creating safe spaces for employees

If we want to encourage employees to speak up at work, we need to first acknowledge the sensitivity of the events we may be asking them to come forward with.

It is vital that you create psychologically safe spaces for discussing difficult topics. Some practical steps you can take include:

• Speaking up first: Sometimes people don’t know they can speak up about an issue until it’s demonstrated to them. Show people what positive reporting patterns look like and they can begin to mirror it.
• Checking in: Use line managers, temperature surveys and resource groups to normalise open communication.
• Establishing support groups: These support groups are a place where employees can share concerns with peers.
• Providing support: Not everybody will need or want to speak up. Having support resources, such as articles on where to go for help, providing access to mental health resources and counselling services, can all serve to demonstrate that you have a culture where discussing difficult topics is supported.

Monitoring and improving the reporting process

Even with all this information, the reality is that you may not get it right the first time around – and that’s okay. Establishing a sustainable speak up culture and eliminating barriers to reporting hinges on continuously monitoring and improving your reporting process. Only then will it be truly effective.

This may sound daunting, but Culture Shift makes it easy with software that gathers data from employees during the reporting process and uses this to identify areas for improvement, whether that’s streamlining procedures or enhancing support resources. This means your system remains robust and aligned with the evolving needs of your employees.

Have you ever thought about investing in reporting software to tackle culture damaging behaviour head-on?

Contact our team to see how we can help transform your organisation and give your employees a voice.