The CBI has apologised for the recruitment of ‘toxic’ staff and for allowing individuals with ‘regressive’ and ‘abhorrent’ attitudes towards women to behave poorly without fear of being detected.
In an open letter, CBI president Brian McBride admitted that the organisation had been complacent and had made mistakes that led to terrible consequences for some employees.
He said: “The challenge of the work that we do, with its unique combination of working closely with government and at a senior level with Britain’s businesses, attracts many of the brightest, most energetic and capable people in the country. But, as we have learned, it sometimes attracts the wrong people too.
“Our systems of culture management, harm prevention and eradication were insufficient. Individually, some – though not all – of these organisational deficiencies may even seem small. But, together, they compounded to cause great harm to some of our own people, and then to the CBI as a whole.”
‘Toxic’ staff
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The CBI has faced numerous allegations of sexual misconduct and rape. It commissioned law firm Fox Williams to conduct an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment when they emerged earlier this year.
Director-general Tony Danker was dismissed after the CBI’s board found his conduct had fallen short of expectations. The CBI said Danker’s dismissal did not relate to the sexual harassment allegations published in national newspapers.
In his open letter to members, McBride said the CBI did not put sufficient preventative measures in place to protect employees from harm, nor did it react appropriately when employees complained about colleagues’ behaviour.
It also failed to filter out culturally toxic people during the hiring process and did not conduct proper cultural onboarding, the CBI’s letter said.
“Some of our managers were promoted too quickly without the necessary prior and ongoing training to protect our cultural values, and to properly react when those values were violated. In assessing performance, we paid more attention to competence than to behaviour,” it said.
“Our HR function was not represented at board level, which reduced escalation paths to senior levels of the company when these were most needed. And we tried to find resolution in sexual harassment cases when we should have removed those offenders from our business.
“In retrospect, this last point was our most grievous error, which led to a reluctance amongst women to formalise complaints. It allowed that very small minority of staff with regressive – and, in some cases, abhorrent – attitudes towards their female colleagues to feel more assured in their behaviour, and more confident of not being detected. And it led victims of harassment or violence to believe that their only option was to take their experiences to a newspaper.”
The letter said CBI’s leadership team is devastated and appalled by the alleged behaviour.
Fox Williams found that there were obstacles to the communication of concerns about employee behaviour to the executive committee and board, which meant concerns were not consistently escalated and discussed when necessary.
The CBI is acting on the recommendations made by Fox Williams, including the recruitment of a chief people officer who will report directly to the board and ensuring all staff and board members receive compulsory and continuous training covering bullying and harassment prevention, employee relations best-practice, mental health awareness and employment law.
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It has also put an independent and confidential whistleblowing channel in place for people to come forward with past and future concerns about misconduct.
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