Unconscious bias pervades every aspect of our lives. This is NOT intentional discrimination, but a general leaning towards, or away, from people and situations that are like us, or not like us based upon how we were raised and what we have learned in our lives. It is influenced by how busy you are, how much legitimacy you place on the other person, where you went to school, where you were born and raised, and dozens of other factors.

Imagine this situation for it’s not so hard to believe…

You are operating your business as best you can, wearing many hats and fulfilling many roles. You have several looming deadlines, 100 items on your to-do list, and a dozen raging fires you have to put out. And, you have a meeting in ten minutes.

An employee knocks on your door and asks if she can talk to you about something that happened on the job. She’s clearly embarrassed, afraid, or both. The amount of courage it took her to walk to your office and knock on your door was substantial. Of course, you invite her in, and she starts to explain about an encounter she had with a male coworker who made her feel uncomfortable, said some creepy things and to you she seems afraid to tell you more and afraid to go back to work. It strikes you as odd for that to come from the accused employee as he’s an alum from your alma mater, you both grew up close to each other and it just can’t be true he would act like that. 8 minutes go by and because she’s so hesitant she’s barely started her story. One of those fires knocks on your door. Your calendar reminder pops up and you see you have but two minutes to use the bathroom, grab a coffee and make the meeting. So, you cut her off as she’s opening up to you. You ask her if she can come back later to talk more about it. She sheepishly agrees and you two leave your office. Not bad. You’re keeping all the balls in the air, right?

She never comes back that afternoon. Your 11 other fires, deadlines and to-do list consume your everyday, like usual, and you completely forget about it. Not because you’re a bad person. Not because you don’t care. Quite the contrary. It’s because you have no idea how critical that what she had to tell you was, and you didn’t give her the chance to tell you everything because, you know, all that other stuff. Almost a week goes by and suddenly you remember and go to her desk. In front of her co-workers, you ask her if she wants to talk more about that “co-worker issue” she brought up last week and you’re sorry you never got back to her sooner. Now, in front of her co-worker who she’s afraid of for doing to her what she tried to tell you he did, she says everything is OK. But it’s not. You take her at her word and put the matter to rest. But as sooner as you walk away, her co-worker starts retaliating against her because he assumes you were talking about him when referring to her attempt to make a complaint to you. A week later she quits.

90 days later you receive her formal complaint from the EEOC. The allegations of what the coworker said and did to her are horrendous, and potentially true. You really don’t know. Now they are amplified with her employer’s failure to respond, the cavalier response to her attempt to lodge the complaint, and seemingly willful participation in encouraging this behavior because there are no policies against it and there was no interest in creating an environment with the appropriate awareness and sensitivity to prevent it. All of these have the likelihood to increase the damages award against your company.

All of this could be prevented simply and economically by having a 3rd-party Employee Hotline dedicated to your business 24/7 and operated by independent Intake Coordinators who take the call and complete the entire intake process for you. When that call comes in, they have a total of ZERO fires, ZERO items on their to-do list and ZERO meetings.

Let Just HR Hotlines bring you peace of mind that these critical matters are being handled by dedicated professionals with no bias or interest in the issue or the outcome. Get a clean, concise report delivered to you so you can effectively strategize how to effectively respond and protect your organization.