Taking an anti-oppressive response to case management
%20(1).png)
How can organisations take an anti-oppressive approach to responding to reports of culture-damaging behaviours?
Research shows that only 44% of people from minority backgrounds trust the police and police processes. According to Government research, 67% of White adults said that they believe the police will treat them fairly compared to 56% of Black adults. An estimated 170,000 incidents of hate crime go unreported every year in the UK. We can link this low reporting rate to the lack of trust that groups who experience hate crimes have in the effectiveness of police reporting processes. This lack of trust may spill over into your organisation’s internal reporting processes.
It is important for organisations to provide members of their community with alternative reporting routes to police processes, to report culture-damaging behaviours they have experienced within their workplace or place of study. This is what the Report and Support platform provides. Report and Support also provides an opportunity for people to report incidents which would not amount to hate crime, but are still harmful, culture damaging incidents that an organisation should be aware of.
However, organisations must build the trust of marginalised, equity-deserving groups in these reporting routes in order for them to be effective and for people to feel empowered and safe enough to report. One excellent way to do this is to adopt an anti-oppressive approach to responding to reports.
What is an anti-oppressive approach?
Anti-Oppressive Practice centres the experiences of equity-deserving groups in order to build structures and systems that work for everyone. Equity-deserving groups include but are not limited to women, people of colour, disabled people, lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people. The term equity-deserving recognises that there’s unjust experiences faced by these and other marginalised groups.
Anti-Oppressive Practice is a social justice-oriented approach to working with people. It recognises the oppression that exists in our society and aims to mitigate the effects of oppression and eventually equalise the power imbalances that exist between people. It also recognises that all forms of oppression are interconnected in some way, shape or form (Aquil et al., 2021).
Anti-Oppressive Practice focuses on how larger systems create and protect the unearned privilege and power that some groups have, while at the same time creating, maintaining, and upholding difficult and inequitable conditions for other groups of people (Baines, 2017). These inequitable conditions created by larger systems can lead to power imbalances between people on an individual level and this can be experienced when accessing support and services.
The rise in calls for anti-oppressive practice
People are increasingly calling organisations to take action against the systematic oppression which exists within our institutions, particularly in response to social movements such as Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo.
Committing to adopting an anti-oppressive approach to responding to reports is an excellent step for organisations to take to work against systematic oppression.
About our training
Do you want to learn more about what it means to adopt an anti-oppressive approach to responding to reports?
We spoke with our partner base to understand their experiences of responding to reports, and in response to your requests have developed a Responder Training Programme.
Whether you are in a dedicated role, a volunteer role, or only occasionally review reports this interactive training provides participants with the know-how to respond to reports in a way that builds trust in your platform and organisational response.
The training covers topics such as:
- What are bullying, harassment, and culture-damaging behaviours?
- The kinds of reports you might receive on Report and Support
- The range of people that report on Report and Support
- Key considerations to take into account when you receive a report
- Having a trauma-informed conversation with a reporter
- The range of possible resolutions to reports
The training programme will provide opportunities for participants to apply their learning to scenario reports and will encourage participants to consider their organisation’s internal processes and consider their responsibility and any limitations of their role.
Additionally, we have a follow-on session that you can book, which covers adopting an anti-oppressive approach to responding to reports
This includes:
- Exploring an anti-oppressive approach
- Discovering what the principles of anti-oppressive practice are and how you can apply these when responding to reports?
- Understanding more about equity deserving groups lived experiences and allyship
- Consider how micro-aggressions and hate crimes are experienced and work through examples of these.
What we're reading
Latest insights from the front lines of workplace culture.
Why Whistleblowing Protections Are Not Enough
The launch of the CIISA standards marked a significant moment for the creative industries, signalling growing recognition of the need for stronger protections around bullying, harassment and misconduct across film, television and wider media environments. But in a recent article for Broadcast Now, we highlight that whistleblowing protections alone will not solve the deeper cultural issues that have allowed harmful behaviour to persist for years.
.png)
Speaking Up in the Creative Industries – Embedding Standards in Practice
With the CIISA Standards having been in place for a year and with the introduction of the Employment Rights Act, expectations around creating a healthy and effective speak up culture are shifting. Organisations being asked to move beyond policy and demonstrate how they are creating real, effective speak-up cultures.
.png)
From the Conference Floor: Real-World Lessons for HR Leaders
Workplace misconduct is evolving, and many HR processes are struggling to keep up. At this year’s Culture Shift Annual Conference, one thing was clear: what worked even a year ago isn’t enough anymore. In this webinar join Gemma McCall (CEO) and Charlotte Taylor (Training Manager and ED&I Specialist) as they bring the most important conversations from the conference floor into a practical session for HR, People and Compliance leaders. You’ll hear what industry experts and legal professionals are seeing right now, and what it means for how you design, communicate and manage your approach to misconduct.
Feeling inspired?
Take the first step toward preventative misconduct management with a demo of our Report + Support™ platform. We can show you how to breakdown reporting barriers with anonymous 2-way messaging, and how to act before things escalate with name-matching and pattern-spotting across our analytics dashboard.
