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Starting as a viral social media response to revelations of horrific sexual abuse allegations against influential Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in 2017, the #MeToo movement made the front pages for months and started serious public conversations. Conversations about everyday sexism, sexual assault and harassment of women, power dynamics in the workplace and fear of retaliation.
While the prominence of #MeToo might have died down in everyday news flow, we can’t underestimate the impact the movement has had in shining the spotlight on these issues and importantly providing a common language for women to demand better. It has also laid the ground for new voices to build upon the movement and continue momentum for change.
In Australia, the mantle has been taken up by the likes of Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins. The former, who just completed her time as Australian of the Year, has advocated for child sexual abuse survivors having been one herself at the hands of her schoolteacher. Grace’s message has also spoken to power dynamics, their role in abusive behaviour and in eliciting fear and silence from victims. Many of the public have seen that same abuse of power occur in so many settings, especially in the workplace.
Brittany Higgins, formerly a staffer in Federal Parliament, became instrumental throughout 2021 in driving community-led activism for women’s rights with the March for Justice. It saw women take to the streets and outside parliaments around Australia to demand the changes necessary so they could feel safe at work and have better legal protections.
Higgins’ advocacy prompted an independent inquiry into parliamentary workplaces led by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins, who was tasked with making recommendations on how to ensure parliamentary workplaces are safe and respectful. In November 2021 Jenkins published the report on her findings, ‘Set the Standard’. While some aspects were unique to Parliament, much of the report was applicable to all workplaces and offered insights into everyday experiences for less dominant groups, typically women.
Set the Standard identified drivers of bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault: power imbalances and the misuse of power; inequality of gender and other non-dominant groups; and insufficient accountability for poor behaviour. This has been amplified and reinforced by unclear and inconsistent application of behavioural standards, poor leadership, negative workplace culture, and ineffectual structures for employment and promotion.
It also revealed that 1 in 3 parliamentary workers had experienced sexual harassment, and that harassment occurs at much higher rates for women compared with men (63% vs 24%). Rates are higher again for people who identify as LGBTIQ+.
Similar rates of sexual harassment have been revealed through submissions and hearings for the WA inquiry into sexual harassment against women in the fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) mining industry which commenced in July 2021. The final report is due in April this year and we expect to see further confirmation of the key drivers and risk factors relating to sexual harassment in the workplace detailed in the Jenkins report.
Despite these rumblings of under-appreciated rates of sexual harassment and bullying in Australian workplaces in recent months, when Rio Tinto this month published a landmark report into its own workplace culture it appeared to catch many by surprise. The review, led by former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, detailed high rates of bullying, widespread sexual harassment and racism being a common occurrence. Like Jenkins, Broderick was given a mandate to make recommendations for Rio Tinto to improve safety and inclusion in the workplace.
To Rio Tinto’s credit, it published the report in full and at the same time committed to implementing all recommendations, providing unprecedented transparency to stakeholders and importantly offered accountability. It was also an act of leadership, demonstrating an acceptance of what has come up as a common theme in these various inquiries: the role of leaders is vital. “Caring and inclusive leadership” and “setting the tone from the top” remains one of the more impactful means through which to drive meaningful workplace change.
But what now is the role of investors?
For boards and senior executives of listed companies it would be foolish – if not dangerous – to assume their workplace is free from bullying and sexual harassment. The rates at which this occurs amongst the general population would indicate it’s statistically improbable they are unimpacted. Further, the Jenkins parliamentary and the WA FIFO inquiries have demonstrated that certain workplaces face elevated risks. For example, those workplaces where power imbalances may be amplified; are male-dominated; and where socialising outside of work hours is more common (which can blur professional boundaries).
Investors must ensure that the boards and executives of their investee companies are reconsidering how they understand and monitor their workplace cultures. It is the role of an investor to be sceptical of claims that “it’s all in hand”. This is especially the case as all of these inquiries have revealed that victims so often fear speaking up and reporting harmful behaviour. How can a company be so sure, then, that those behaviours aren’t occurring?
This requires a new approach to understanding the workplace, its culture and the barriers to creating safe and inclusive environments for employees. Investors should be challenging companies to not solely rely on voluntary reporting through mistrusted channels and instead ask how companies can innovate to elicit relevant information from staff to get a more accurate ‘sense check’ of the state of play with respect to bullying and harassment.
As the Rio Tinto report highlighted, both formal and informal channels are needed to safely call out poor behaviour. This includes encouraging all staff to be “active bystanders” and, for example, not stay silent should a colleague make a sexist remark. Further, options for reporting should be reinforced by actions which give employees confidence that there are consequences for perpetrators and victims are protected.
Investors should also challenge investee companies’ approach to leadership and encourage training and capability building relating to caring and inclusive leadership styles. At a minimum this should be for the most senior leaders, but preferably middle management as it is this group which is often at the frontline in responding to instances of poor behaviour and “living” the culture of the company.
While many companies won’t be as well-resourced as Rio Tinto to undertake a multi-month review, there are still improvements every company can make to improve safety and inclusion for all their staff. With investors being afforded influence through their shareholding, they should push companies to see what can be done within their operations.
Failure to make safe and inclusive workplaces can not only have serious and long lasting negative impacts upon the victims of the resultant bullying, sexual harassment or assault, it results in poor business outcomes such as loss of productivity or challenges in attracting the best talent. While investors should be morally concerned with any harm caused to individuals, when there is also a clear potential for value destruction, they must act to ensure companies are managing this issue appropriately.
Written by: Maddy Dwyer and Nick Varcoe, Paradice ESG
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