Firstly, I want to say how proud I am of our employment team for uncovering such worrying findings and acting on them to encourage workplaces to do more to support employees who experience this type of behaviour and to prevent it from happening in the first place.
In the past, Wright Hassall has experienced some behaviour that didn’t align with our culture. Since coming into my role just over a year ago, I’ve made significant changes to the business and put the right people and tools in place to overcome the challenges we had previously faced around unacceptable behaviour.
It’s a journey, but I’m pleased to say that things have changed. Some of these changes include:
- A Health and Wellbeing committee focused on colleagues' mental and physical health.
- A culture committee which gives feedback on our progress and input’s into the direction we need to take
- Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee focused on supporting inclusion across the firm.
- Each of our committees has members of the Senior Leadership Team as part of them, and as such, they can act quickly whenever needed
- We’re creating a set of leadership behaviours and expectations that our managers will be accountable for.
As part of End Workplace Bullying Day, we’re relaunching our Dignity at Work policy internally, which incorporates our approach to bullying and harassment and introducing mandatory training for all employees in this area to raise awareness and emphasise the support for our people if they experience or witness it.
Part of our reason for this campaign is that we want other workplaces to learn from us. We want to set a good example. We want to show that if you put things right and do everything you can to set a better standard, you can change your workplace's culture.
We hope that you join us in this movement.
Many thanks,
Phil Wilding, Managing Partner, Wright Hassall
