Events

Event Overview:

Speaking up is never easy, be it about harassment, a safety wrong-doing, or even to state a view. Practicing active listening to concerns is also a key personal skill set. Management of the put down that comes in some instances where one speaks to express a view only, can in fact constitute harassment. Should the individual with concerns remain silent? The answer is a resounding NO, as talked through in the first session on this topic during the conversation with Kirsten Trott and Catherine Wu on 30th October 2020. This second session will continue the conversation and journey and aims to help attendees better address and tackle the following questions:

• Having spoken up, what then?
• What are the likely consequences to follow for the individual who has spoken up?
• Should there be any consequences?
• Common pain points and what often goes wrong in practice
• How to better listen up and create a listen up culture.

Through discussion with Kirsten and Kala, we hope to help navigate the complexities involved and increase awareness and help to demystify this very taboo topic of speak up/listen up and how to turn negatives into positives and create opportunities.
Some key takeaways for those attending will include:

• Identify key issues and address challenges/opportunities.
• Provide some practical solutions to these thorny matters.
• Raise awareness.

Discussion Points:

This follow-on session will review these questions as it touches also on the practical steps to be taken from both the employer’s and employees’ perspectives. There will be an opportunity to raise questions with our speakers to gain further insights and perspectives on speak up issues and taboos. Attendees can look forward to a conversation and discussion touching on the following:

• Practical tips on preventive measures to address prevention of retaliation and to manage the continued working environment in a sustained manner. Note that the person speaking up and the affected employee(s)could be two different parties.
• Managing potentially four parties. What are some of the practical issues which arise from the receipt of feedback to long-term implications for legal/compliance counsels to manage with key stakeholders within and outside the organisation and beyond?
• The company
• The person speaking up
• The person listening to the concern
• The affected employee(s) and in some cases a third party outside the company throughout the process.
• What are the common issues that arise and what often goes wrong with learnings to be shared? Being able to make quick decisions as to whether external parties need to be notified et al, including managing the person speaking up so that external parties are not brought into the picture too quickly, but more importantly, unnecessarily.
• Managing the process such as the interviews as well as practical matters, and the softer side of assurances to all concerned parties - too often, parties forget the stress that is associated with this.
• Practical tips on managing communication within the organisation, i.e. what is to be said and how to be able to maintain the dignity of all.
• Practical steps on managing the conclusions that come through following the investigations, including whether there should be sanctions imposed or even whether there should be termination, and if so, doing this in a manner to prevent allegations of unfair termination.
• Tips on how to address the situation where the person speaking up is vindictive or simply creating an issue, and whether there should be consequences in such instances. What would be the implication to the whistle-blowing system?

Moderator: 

Greg Tanner is the Group General Counsel of International SOS, the world’s leading medical & security services company, which operates in over 100 countries with 11,000 employees, led by over 5,000 medical practitioners and security specialists. International SOS’s global service offerings include medical and travel risk and security planning, health assurance and preventative care programs, in-country medical expertise, and emergency response services for mobile workers, travelers, expatriates, and their dependents.  International SOS also undertakes the staffing and operation of over 800 sites remote and industrial medical sites. And International SOS is the largest global concierge service, provider.

Greg is a lawyer admitted to the Bar of the State of New York, to the Supreme Court of Judicature of England and Wales and to the Ordre des Avocats de Paris. Greg has practiced at Clifford Chance and White & Case, two of the world’s leading law firms, in, variously, London, New York, Singapore, Luxembourg, Jakarta, and Paris. 

Greg headed the Legal Department in the Asia Pacific for Informix Software and was the Director of Legal & Regulatory Affairs for DHL and a Member of the DHL Asia Pacific Management Board. Greg also worked with DHL in Brussels as Senior Vice President in charge of Global Organizational Effectiveness, which position he held prior to joining International SOS. His responsibilities at International SOS include handling all legal matters, including an active M&A agenda, data protection, internal audit, internal security, group insurance, regulatory affairs, and corporate secretarial services.

Speakers:

Kala Anandarajah heads the Competition & Antitrust and Trade Practice and leads the Corporate Governance Practice. Always a forerunner in niche areas of the law, she also has a strong practice in Employment and EHS. Anandarajah takes pride in ensuring that every piece of work she undertakes is targeted and focussed, always addressing issues in a practical solution-oriented manner. Specifically, on managing whistleblowing, Anandarajah’s experience extends across a wide range of issues given her employment and governance practice. She has handled the receipt of complaints, going through the investigative process, reviewing the best approaches to take and guided employers. She has also handled whistleblowing at corporate level issues and guiding the approach that audit companies and boards should adopt. Her experience extends to compliance in putting the entire process together as well as training. Anandarajah a board member of the Building & Construction Authority, the Singapore Institute of Legal Education and a member of the External Review Panel of Safety in the SAF, amongst others. Anandarajah was in 2014 awarded the Public Service Medal (Pingat Bakti Masyarakat) which is conferred by the President of Singapore.

Kirsten Trott is the Head of Compliance for HBF, an Australian Private Health Insurance provider. She has extensive experience in making whistleblowing work for organizations and in dealing with some of the difficult issues that arise in whistleblowing matters. 

As the global lead for whistleblowing at Standard Chartered Bank, in which she designed and implemented whistleblowing arrangements that complied with UK Financial Services regulations across 63 countries, she has been at the coalface of making whistleblowing work within a large, culturally complex and highly regulated company. As the Deputy Director of Public Concern at Work (now called Protect), the UK based global thought leader on whistleblowing, she identified and developed whistleblowing best practice through her work advising organizations across all sectors on whistleblowing. She also gave legal and practical advice to hundreds of whistle-blowers from across all sectors and levels of seniority, giving her a unique insight into the whistle-blower’s experience and psyche, which she continues to draw on.  In her role as founder and principal consultant at Moken Consulting, she advised companies to move beyond compliance and to get their whistleblowing systems working in practice.