Author Sj. (Sjoerd) Vredenberg
Feeling safe at work, that is what every employee deserves! For example, we are talking about undesirable behavior such as bullying, sexual harassment, aggression and violence and discrimination. Your confidential counsellor (also called a confidant) contributes to creating a safe working environment. Dutch law (Arbowet) requires employers to implement a policy to prevent or limit psychosocial work pressure at work.
The confidential counsellor
The confidential counsellor is the point of contact for your employees if the employee feels involved in undesirable behavior or in other integrity issues.
Misconducts
The employee must be able to easily find an independent listening ear in the event of experienced undesirable behavior such as:
Bullying
Aggression and violence
Sexual harassment
Discrimination
As an employer, you have probably defined concrete standards for what is meant by these different topics by drawing a red line. At the end of the day, your employees decide for themselves whether boundaries are crossed.
Integrity issues
The confidential counselor can also be contacted for other integrity issues. This covers a broad area of potential wrongdoings. It helps to consider that sincerity, honesty or reliability are at stake: are there no ulterior motives, is it about 'truth' and is what is said done!
Consider:
Customers or suppliers (not acting with integrity)
Internal and external information (including deception)
Governance of the organization (think of supervision)
Financial (crime, e.g. fraud)
Products or services (including safety)
Competition (think of bribery)
A good confidential counselor
The confidential counselor in your organization is:
Independent
Approachable
Professionally competent
Findable
The role of the confidential counselor
Your confidential counselor is primarily a listening ear for your employee. Especially during the first contact, he or she is non-judgmental, does not immediately come up with a solution, and does not jump to conclusions too quickly. Your employee feels heard!
As a next step, the confidential counselor can be helpful by advising and facilitating in starting up the dialogue between those involved.
The confidential counselor can help if the employee wants to file a complaint.
If it seems like a good next step, the confidential counselor can be helpful in referring the employee to other care providers.
Prevention
The confidential counselor can also play an important role in the phases prior to potential misconducts. In this way, the confidential counselor can be valuable in identifying behaviors in an early stage, that later could lead to perceived abuses.
Providing information to employees by the confidential counselor can have a preventive effect and can also contribute positively to the approachability of the confidential counselor.
Internal or external
Employing a confidential counselor can for organizations (still) be a too big step. If that results in not providing a confidential counselor to your employees, involving externally this important role in the organization is definitely a good alternative.
Due to the knowledge and experience of Lakatos, you have a very good partner in us for fulfilling this role in your organization.
Lakatos as your confidential counselor
We are happy to be the independent, professional, approachable and easily accessible confidential counselor for your employees.
In addition, we are not only there in the event of a suspected abuse: we are also happy to help with determining policies, working on good contact with employees, providing information, being the antenna for developments and we will provide clear feedback on this.
This means that we are regularly visible and always easily reachable!
Costs
Our service has a simple compensation model:
Subscription
€ 975,- annually
Fee
€ 125,- hourly
*) Advice, education and training and individual cases
Contact
We would like to get in touch with you about this clear and de-worrying Lakatos service.
You can reach us in the following ways:
By phone: +31 33 799 95 05
Per email: info@lakatos-integrity.nl
For the print version of this article, click here.
Yorumlar