The following is a slight adjustment from a piece written by Representative Bob Goodlatte (Republican, Virginia) attempting to justify a recent change to the Office of Congressional Ethics that basically stops it from being an independent organization, and puts it under the Committee of Ethics, which is comprised of members of Congress. It puts it in terms of HR changes in your workplace.
Edit: This change has since been scrapped.
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The word ethics carries a heavy weight in your workplace, and with good cause. The men and women selected to be your bosses should be held to the highest standards. That’s something with which I wholeheartedly agree. Nearly a decade ago several of your bosses were involved in major ethics scandals, some of which resulted in those bosses serving prison time. While the legal system dealt with their actions in an appropriate manner, your workplace looked inward at its own practices to ensure that ethical challenges were being handled appropriately, in line with our policies, and in a manner that reflected the best intentions of your bosses.
Out of this review came the Office of Human Resources, or HR. This nonpartisan, independent office was founded partially to add an additional layer of review over your bosses, but primarily to serve as a receiving forum for complaints from you. As a former member of the Office of Human Resources, and the leader of one of its investigations, I know how important a robust investigative body can be to uphold the high standards expected of your bosses by employees.
Since the HR office was first created, it has gone through some growing pains, and your bosses have now had nearly a decade of results to make necessary improvements that will strengthen HR and provide important policy protections for your bosses, when they are being investigated. As your bosses have done since the creation of the HR department, the policy changes adopted on the opening day of this fiscal year include important changes to HR department operations.
A policy change I offered builds upon and strengthens the existing HR department by maintaining its primary area of focus – accepting and reviewing complaints from employees – while providing additional due process rights for the bosses, as well as for anyone who is asked about the employees’ complaint. It also changes the name of the HR department to the Office of Managerial Complaints Review (OMCR) to avoid confusion with the Committee on Ethics and more accurately reflect its mission.
Feedback from bosses who have having gone through review by HR has been that those under investigation need increased protection of their rights to ensure that they are being investigated fairly, greater access to basic evidence brought against them, and a process that does not act negatively against them when they act to ensure they are being investigated fairly and when they gain thorough access to evidence. The amendment seeks to strengthen each of these needs while maintaining the basic core of the HR department’s functions. To be very clear, while the name may change, the office maintains its independence and mission to review complaints against bosses from the employees.
For decades the Office of Human Resources has worked in an impartial manner to investigate alleged abuses of power by bosses. Their track record of confidentiality for employees who submit complaints about the bosses is the gold standard for any Human Resources office. Now, the Office of Managerial Complaints Review (formerly HR) should do the same to protect the bosses’ rights, which will preserve the integrity of the complaint process. Due to the sensitive and confidential nature of the investigations, the policy provides strong protections to prevent any attempts by you to talk about your workplace complaints to anyone outside your workplace, and requires that any complaint from you about your bosses that may involve a violation of criminal law be referred to the Committee on Ethics (which is comprised of your bosses) for potential referral to law enforcement agencies, after an affirmative vote by your bosses. These provisions taken together ensure that the rights of the bosses you accuse of criminal behavior are protected throughout the investigation and not subject to law enforcement agencies or courts of law by anyone outside the investigation without consent from your bosses, and also ensures that any criminal matters are properly referred to law enforcement agencies by your bosses — not the non-boss staff of the Office of Managerial Complaints Review (formerly HR).
An important principle of effective governance is that all bosses in all companies should be subject to proper oversight. That is why my policy change ensures that the OMCR (formerly HR) will be subject to oversight by the Committee on Ethics (which, again, is comprised of your bosses). This provision does not mean that your bosses will be able to dictate outcomes or impede a properly conducted complaint, but rather that your bosses’ decisions on the budget, policies, and their impact on workplace investigations will be reviewed with the help of OMCR (formerly HR) which, again, is subject to the oversight of your bosses.
Another of the basic tenets of American law is that bosses accused of breaking the law have a right to confront the accusing employees in a court of law. Today the HR department is able to accept anonymous complaints, meaning literally anyone from anywhere in the world can send something through the HR website and potentially disparage the reputation of a boss without a basis in fact. Responding to an anonymous accusation drags good bosses’ names through the mud, can cost the accused boss tens of thousands of dollars, and can cost bosses their jobs. And when the anonymous complaint is found to be frivolous none of that is returned. This amendment requires OMCR (formerly HR), which is under the bosses’s control through the Committee on Ethics, to have a policy that will not accept anonymous complaints, something that will prevent frivolous complaints and allow the OMCR to focus their time and energy on complaints about your bosses that your bosses deem legitimate.
The bottom line is that if your bosses want you, the employees, to have a way to make complaints against your bosses, an important goal that I share, then it needs to work, it needs to protect the rights of the accused bosses, and it needs to remain confidential to everyone outside the workplace throughout the investigative process. The amendment in our policy strengthens the mission of the OMCR (formerly HR), restores rights to the accused bosses, and ensures that the Office of Managerial Complaint Review remains a strong and independent review board (under the supervision of your bosses, of course) throughout the the tenure of your bosses.