Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep90: Should you SPEAK UP at work? You have 4 options.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Hello everyone and welcome back to a brand new episode of the Career Career Online and Offline podcast. This is Mei Ping.

Starting point is 00:00:34 Today, I want to talk about the speak up policies in multinational companies. So if you have been working in a corporate job in a slightly bigger company that's beyond an SME, you have likely heard of the speak up policies that are pretty much mandatory HR policies and are frequently talked about in multiple platforms and how all these things are really good things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in today's episode, I just want to share my personal experiences and also some of my clients' experiences having applied the speak up policies, but may not necessarily see the sort of like result or impact that is actually intended. So this topic came up quite recently when I was talking to one of my clients who was really facing a lot of problems with certain people at work.

Starting point is 00:01:32 So we were talking about what she can do and some of the options available to her to deal with this potentially problematic person, not just in attitude, but perhaps some of the behavior, you know, my client didn't feel that this person was really adhering to in terms of like the company's policies and some of those things. So what I'll say today

Starting point is 00:01:57 may be a little bit controversial, but my personal experience with speaking up policies, I feel like these are really for show. And I'm really sorry to say this, but before you utilize a speak up policy, right? And if you work in like bigger companies, I'm sure you have seen general speak up policies

Starting point is 00:02:23 that pretty much go like this. Number one, talk to your boss, right? The first person that you should talk to. Then you could talk to HR, right? For a little bit more of an independent view. And thirdly, you could fill up in an anonymous form, so to speak. And yeah, and then it goes to an anonymous team and then everything will be investigated.

Starting point is 00:02:43 You need to give the details. You need to give the details. You need to give the contact list and so forth. So now, I have personally used this pickup policy before. However, my personal experience has not been particularly positive. And I'll tell you why. While the intention of the speak up policy is a very positive one right you know giving um employees and staff a space to share um potentially anonymously and raise concerns but i feel like you need to remember at the end of the

Starting point is 00:03:20 day the speak up policy or whatever like there are people behind who are managing these policies so when there are people involved what that also means is that there will be a lot of like biases as well and that's where everything becomes really tricky so um the example that i was talking a little bit about earlier um it was something that i had raised to my boss at that point in time um but it was pretty much brushed off and said, okay, yeah, this person, he's just like this, right? So just, it's fine, just ignore. I feel like if somebody tells you to ignore something,

Starting point is 00:03:55 that is not a good sign because you are basically subjecting your mental health to just deal with this person that clearly is misbehaving and you're pretty much being told by your boss that oh you know you should just like suck it up and shut up and i think that this is actually really against the speaker policy the fact that i feel like if you raise it to your boss then that's clearly something that has been bothering you. That's why you're raising it, right? And I feel like for the boss to say, hey, you know, maybe just ignore his final,

Starting point is 00:04:31 this person, he's like this, so just ignore. I feel like that is completely unacceptable. And furthermore, that person is in a very senior position as well. So I feel like it says a lot about the team's culture. It says a lot about the company's culture, and that is not a positive thing. Then when I also talk to other people, they will tell me,

Starting point is 00:04:49 oh, maybe you should just have gone to HR. HR will sort it out. I don't mean to be rude here, but sometimes I feel like dealing with HR is one of those functions that it really depends on the quality of people that you speak to. Because I have spoken to really good HR people, but I also know of really, yeah, HR people

Starting point is 00:05:11 who are, they themselves have very bad attitude, and they themselves don't care about people, but they are in human resources, which I find extremely confusing. But the point I'm trying to make here is that if you choose to go to a HR person, make sure that you have a good idea of the dynamics behind HR and the business. And I can tell you that in most instances, the HR person will always side with your team. They will always side with your boss or the senior leadership. That is just the way that you know hierarchy is structured at the cop uh in the corporate world and you know it's nobody's fault

Starting point is 00:05:51 but it's just structurally works like that and i have had clients who come to me very naively like to air all their grievances to hr and later on these things that were supposed to be confidential right were informed to their boss and informed to their team, and then they really, you know, get the backlash out of it, right? So that actually creates a lot of lack of trust on both sides, like both, you know, on my client's side, as well as, you know, the boss's side. And this is just like a fundamental flaw in the corporate world, generally speaking. So I just want to remind you all that if you choose to go to HR, just remember that HR is also a person, right? And people have biases,

Starting point is 00:06:34 unfortunately, but that's the reality. People have biases. And in most instances, I'd say like 99% of the time, the HR person will always side with with your team they'll always side with your boss so sometimes i feel like it's very counterproductive to go to hr because um you not you do not necessarily get the kind of help that you need right in terms of like alleviating that problem then the third option i also hear a lot is hey maybe you should fill up an anonymous form you know all these policies are really good yada yada so i have actually also done that for one of the um the example that i told you a little bit earlier like my personal experience and actually there were no action taken so in that sense right i feel like these all these policies are i don't want to say it's a waste of time but i feel like it's most of the time it is being sold

Starting point is 00:07:28 as something like oh yeah you know look at we have all these things and everything else but like the implementation is like almost zero so if that is the case then actually what is the main point of like all these policies because i remember from my personal um experience you know you had to fill up the form you have to give all the contact details that they could reach out to. You also need to actually explain in detail what actually happened and even attach documents and all those things I have done. But at the end of the day, like nothing happened. And if you are curious about the person that I was talking about, the person is still within the company. In fact, in a very senior

Starting point is 00:08:05 position as well and basically no action was taken even though like every a lot of people knew this person as a really rude person has very um has done very questionable questionable things but unfortunately people prefer to gossip rather than actually taking action to yeah remove this sort of thing. And then people wonder why, you know, in the corporate world, you can't find people with good ethics and culture. And the reason is because structurally it's not even enabling that. And it kind of also makes me feel like certain kind of people are actually protected from repercussions,

Starting point is 00:08:42 maybe because they are very senior or, you know, maybe they have a special skill set or maybe this and maybe that, right? And that is really, really unfortunate. So in most instances, right? And personally for me, what I did quite a while ago, and I always made sure that I have a mentor that is outside of my company right so my i always make sure that my mentor is not somebody who is working in the company not in the same team as me not in the same you know region or like responsibility and so forth so it's really somebody that is outside and my mentor for a very long time was somebody that i had worked with in an earlier company who could be objective in listening to my challenges and really able to give

Starting point is 00:09:25 me perspectives on that and this mentor i had was from actually a while ago and it was actually many years ago that even this whole you know coaching is not really something very popular and at that time was really like mentors particularly from you know people who are a lot more senior you really can somebody that you can actually learn from so i personally found that conversations with my mentor actually gave me a bit more clarity on what i should do and more importantly is this is that the kind of culture you know for that company or that team or that management that i actually want to work with so i think those conversations that i had with my mentor, personally, I found more helpful rather than, you know,

Starting point is 00:10:05 trying to tell my boss who would just tell me to ignore everything or talk to HR where I may face repercussions or basically fill out like a form where nothing is going to be done. I feel like after doing all those three things, it made me even angrier because I feel like, hey, nothing is happening to this person. Like, what is the point of me like trying to raise everything and like create awareness or like letting certain people know when at the

Starting point is 00:10:29 end of the day like no action is going to be taken so i felt like all these things actually deterred me from wanting to um to pursue certain things or yeah to i guess make make a change for lack of better word but i guess, for my more mental health, I always make sure that I speak to my mentor. So at least I get that sort of help. And in fact, when I shared this on LinkedIn yesterday, there was one of my LinkedIn connections actually sent me a message and told me she personally got into trouble

Starting point is 00:10:59 because her speaking up, she actually spoke up about her boss and even to the HR. And at the end of the day, both of them actually actually spoke up about her boss and even to the hr and at the end of the day both of them actually ganged up against her and the worst thing is that that boss that she was like speaking up towards was the assigned workplace coach then she basically got into like a double-dip trouble because she was like basically raising it and like i said hr normally starts with your boss and you're basically on the losing end so she was in a bit of a situation because of like actually following the policy so if it makes me very sad that people who are following the policies other people who are getting into trouble and it

Starting point is 00:11:36 really shouldn't be the case so anyway like i said um you know to change the entire corporate culture is not something that you can do alone it's is not something that you can do alone. It's probably not something that you can do right now. But what you can do right now is to protect yourself and knowing how you can move forward without letting all these things that are really burdening you down. Because if you're constantly pursuing options that you know is not going to get results or even worse is going to get you into trouble,

Starting point is 00:12:03 then that's probably something that's not worth doing so my advice over here is sure right assess objectively and if you feel comfortable go through all the processes that your company has outlined in terms of back to speaking up policies but just remember there is a fourth option and go and speak to a mentor go and speak to a coach you can probably get that solution faster or at least at a minimum you get that peace of mind faster and i think that's what i personally found very helpful for me and i hope that all of you or if you are feeling that sort of frustration that i felt previously you do not wallow in your frustration and you really take action even if you cannot change the entire culture what you can do is that you can improve your peace of mind and with that i'll end today's episode and i wish you all take care of yourself and do something that

Starting point is 00:12:59 can actually improve your situation without trying to overhaul the entire system because probably that's not what you can do at the moment so with that i wish you a very good week and i'll see you next week cheers

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep90: Should you SPEAK UP at work? You have 4 options.

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