HOW COMPLIANCE PROGRAMMES CAN HELP TO COMBAT WORKPLACE RETALIATION

Incidents of retaliation in the workplace are not only invidious, they can also seriously undermine much of the good work of a company’s compliance programme and, if left unchecked, can create a toxic work environment. This article assesses the impact of retaliation and the measures that can be implemented to prevent retaliation or curtail its effect.

Retaliation is an adverse employment action taken against an individual because of the individual’s good faith reporting of a compliance matter. Examples of adverse employment actions include threats of some adverse consequence, unjustified warning or dismissal, demotion, reduction in compensation, or less favourable employment treatment, that are a result of or linked to the individual raising a compliance concern.

Adverse action may also be subtle and difficult to spot. Examples of less obvious actions include isolating the employee or making him or her feel ostracised, exclusion from team meetings and events or unmerited complaints of poor work performance.

In 2019, more than half (53.8 percent) of the concerns processed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency responsible for enforcing employee protection laws in the US, included allegations of employer retaliation.

Cost of retaliation

The cost of retaliation can be difficult to quantify. There is, of course, the potential cost of settling or an award of damages when retaliation claims are litigated before the courts. As an illustration of the sorts of figures that US cases attract, an Iowa jury awarded $80.2m in punitive damages and $527,872 in compensatory damages to a manager who claimed she was discriminated against because of her sex and retaliated against when she complained of the discrimination. In another sexual harassment and retaliation case, the court, in addition to denying the defendant’s motion for judgment as a matter of law on the plaintiff’s retaliation claim, evaluated the jury’s damage awards to the plaintiff at $750,000 in emotional distress damages and $500,000 in punitive damages.

Jul-Sep 2020 Issue

Nokia