Does this ever go well?

[cocoromo]

Hi all,
has anyone ever taken complaints about a manager to a senior/ HR and had action taken?
I am looking for a new job as I am so sick of the passive aggressive, bullying, favouritism and general incompetence going on. I also feel like I don’t want to leave without doing something about it.

YABU - don’t bother it never ends well
YANBU - Report it as this behaviour shouldn’t be tolerated

It really depends how you and they are already perceived by management and HR and how effective management and HR are.

When I retired I filled in my leaving form honestly and detailed the favouritism in the department. No one contacted me to discuss the issues and I was never invited back to any leaving do’s.

It depends on a lot OP

In a completely toxic work environment, my experience is that going to a manager or HR is akin to pouring petrol on a fire. Often the people causing the problems are well in with them. One place early in my career I got managed out for reporting my supervisor as she got two witnesses to claim she never did the thing that she actually did.
In a generally non-toxic setup with some problematic individuals, my observation from seeing others with issues is that HR might actually help solve the problem. Might. But you still have to work with the people causing the problems so meaningful change is unlikely to take place because people resent being told to change by HR/managers.
So it depends on the work environment and the people involved.

Depends. My DH and his colleagues were being bullied by a senior manager. They all agreed to push forward a bullying and harassment complaint against her. Letter was drafted etc but one by one, his colleagues pulled out as they panicked that it wouldn’t go their way and they’d need to find new jobs etc.

DH went alone on it and “won”. Turned out there’d been lots of issues and complaints over the years but no one had actually taken it the full way.

The manager took a “voluntary severance package” which was effectively leave or you’ll be sacked. Which I think is a bit of a cop out but it was a public sector job so much more common to manage people out the door.

but it meant DH (and his colleagues) had a much better working environment.

Good luck.

I think there are already issues and other staff have complained….i think the majority of the staff would back me up, as aside from a small clique, most are decent people.

This is also public sector. I’m pleased it went well for your husband.

Back you up?

But not complain about their own experience?

I like to think it’s mostly non toxic. I think the department is isolated so lots goes on without senior staffs and HR knowledge as they are not based there. I do think it will be like petrol on a fire, but also I feel like it needs to be challenged and it’s so toxic anyway, what’s a little more?

Yes, back me up. I doing think they are going to complain off their own backs as they are not based there so not affected to the point of wanting to leave. Hard to describe without being too outing.

I do think if they were asked about it directly by HR, they would tell the truth.

I agree it's better to leave for another job.

I reported once, years ago, and it went nowhere and was really poorly handled. It was very distressing and ultimately the bully continued on her merry way, I left my job and that was that.
However, many years later, I worked again with the two people (separate occasions) who mishandled the case (never came across the bully again) and each of them apologised for how they had let me down. Apparently, their hands were tied despite there being such a strong case against the individual 🙄🙄
Do what gives you peace of mind.

ETA: prior to making my complaint, I spoke with various colleagues who were also subjected to the bullying. They wanted to support my complaint but didn’t want to risk their jobs so they kept their heads down and said nowt.

Consider whistleblowing where you have a great deal more protection. Is there a whistleblowing policy?

Your DH is a hero! Bet you were well proud of him.

My experiences have been to be bullied by the CEO and picked on by a partner, so unfortunately I had nowhere to go with a complaint. Good luck OP.

It massively depends. I had a manager once who drove me to take time off sick with stress. It ended well for me and the manager eventually left the organisation partly because I was in good standing with senior management, but mainly because said awful boss had also fallen out with the top tier of the organisation. I settled back into my role and everything was pretty good after that.

But I think my experience was very unusual. I have seen it happen time and again that the subordinate person is either managed out or takes a deal and leaves.

Once you have raised an issue, there is no going back, one way or another.

It very much depends on the situation:

• How well established it is that the manager is a bully (and critically, whether there's evidence)
• How much support that manager has among the staff - if there's a pattern of behaviour with multiple staff complaining of the same treatment you have a better chance than if there's just one of you
• What your professional and personal reputation is like with the company
• How long your tenure is
• Whether you have a proper, functioning HR department (a lot of the time HR is basically a figleaf for management)

Are all key factors.

I have to say I'm pretty sceptical that these things end well. I'm in a similar position to you now and I'm job hunting because I don't have confidence that raising a grievance would land in my favour. It's hard to see what the endgame is of making a complaint. It would be very unlikely the manager would get fired (unless they'd done something which could be demonstrated to be gross negligence or professional incompetence) so the best case scenario would be that you or they would get moved but you'd still be considered "troublesome" and watched at the firm.

I think people need to look at their motives for making complaints. Quite often they just want the manager to be punished but that very rarely happens. Most of the time you're better off moving on.

Thank you for the response.
I think it’s a bit of an unwritten rule that they are a bully, but most are not too affected so can’t be bothered with the hassle, but would probably support if asked directly.
I have some evidence of unprofessional behaviour, but lots of passive aggression is hard to prove.
its hard to see the way out at the moment, I appreciate you taking the time to reply.

@cocoromo

Yeah I sympathise. Work bullies are usually smart enough to know where to draw the line so the bullying stops short of being anything that's clearly identifiable. It's something you know when you experience but which sounds ambivalent when you explain it to someone else.

To give you a random example of this: I was at a work function yesterday with my company and some clients and my boss charged me with spending the whole evening fetching wine from the bar. I'm the third most senior person at the company out of 40 people in my geography after her, there were four support staff there (whose job it literally was to manage catering and go to the bar). And I had told her I needed to leave because my daughter was home alone. Despite this she felt the best use of my time was to be a literal gopher for her and she kept saying, in front of the clients: "Go and grab me two more bottles of rose!"

I'm as sure as I can be that this was designed to embarrass me and belittle me and make me uncomfortable. But none of it would stand up in a tribunal. Its me versus her and if I challenged her it she would deny it was anything more than a good-natured joke.

Look I'm sorry to be negative, but I've been through and witnessed this situation enough times to know that its very hard to win this unless a boss has done something truly egregious. Focus on the long term strategy, of making your life better and not the short term hit of catching someone out.

I experienced this type of thing working once. I think it was a very unique situation.

I was on a team that had a manager who was a good manager then sort of bottomed out. Favoritism, incompetence, nasty comments, setting people up for failure, etc. Everyone on the team was struggling with her.

I don’t remember what the catalyst was on one particular day but we all kind of had it and went to her boss (director) and bluntly asked that he take over active management of the team. He listened to us, heard our examples, asked for documentation, etc.

2 weeks later she had been reassigned to an individual contributor role and we began reporting to that director. About a month later she was gone. (There was more shenanigans involving her in the interim)

What we didn’t know at the time but later found out was that she was complaining to HR about the director. She had made accusations of harassment and hostile work environment. So all that was going on at the time we made our complaints.

• here’s where I’ll add that the director is the absolute last person I’d ever believe would be guilty of any type of harassment or discrimination against women. He was supportive, encouraged growth, was one of the best managers I’ve ever had.

Story time over…

I think unless there is something else going on it’s next to impossible to ‘win’ against a crappy manager. I’ve had a handful of bad managers over my career and with the exception of the one above my strategy is to put my head down and either wait them out or find a new job. Things like favoritism and cliquish behavior, bullying, etc. is next to impossible to prove and will generally not be something that HR is going to get involved with beyond a cursory level.

Why did it work in the situation above? I think because there was already HR involvement. At this point the company was already seeing her as a liability and I’m guessing that the harassment claims came as a result of her manager (director) pursuing some type of performance management with her.

I ended up going to the board of directors due to the corruption and eneptness of management and HR in a certain company. The rolled out management training but in the end about 10 people left as it was all lip service, the bullying was endemic, incompetence from the top down. Just leave.

It’s always important to remember that HR don’t exist to protect staff. They exist to protect the company. So the success of any complaint is usually predicated on whether the company could be sued if they knowingly allowed the behaviour to continue. That has a lot to do with evidence.

I appreciate everyone taking the time to reply and share their stories. I will update when I decide what to do, and let you k is how it goes. I am job hunting this weekend.

Just an update…. I had an interview Wednesday and they offered me the job! I did try and subtly speak to senior leaders but they were not too interested and passive aggression and bullying are hard to prove so I feel good about my decision to move on. Time for a fresh start. Can’t wait to leave. Thank you all for your advice and wise words.