Anonymous Complaint

[BlackBean2023]

I have a very senior role in an organisation. My boss is a narcissistic bully. Everyone is scared to approach him because he is so volatile and I often get the brunt of it. We’re currently not hitting a major target which is stressing him out and his behaviour has become intolerable. I have told him how he makes me feel and his response was to make it about how stressed he is. The department I lead is high performing but I heard him on the phone yesterday taking credit for something I’ve led and saying something along the lines of “if anything happens here it’s because I made it so”- this is absolutely not true and I don’t want to be his scape goat this year (there’s been one for the last two). I am the breadwinner in our family and also can’t afford to lose a high paid job by putting my head above the parapet.

We’re a charity so have a board of trustees. I am pondering submitting an anonymous letter that can’t be traced back to me telling trustees what he’d like. I know if they asked other members of the senior leadership team (about 10) that they would say the same as me.

It’s not my style but I’m sat here at 7.21 dreading going to work because of one person. AIBU? What else can I do?

Any Board would be crazy to act on an unverifiable anonymous complaint.

I do a lot of work on this kind of thing, and my advice is always to ignore anonymous letters. While you may not like it, anyone who has a complaint put against them has a right to fair procedure and to know what the complaint is about, and the details of the incident/incidents and who raise it. Acting on an anonymous complaint doesn’t allow for fair process or natural justice.

Either it’ll be ignored, or he’ll get wind of it and employ sneakier tactics to keep his powered dry but without actually changing his behaviour, you’re on the back foot.

Don’t risk your position.

If they perceive him to be of value, this will end up blowing up in your face.

I’ve worked somewhere like this before. It does happen. There was high staff turnover though.

Hard one. I’ve been in this boat a couple of times, and will let you know the Board will always back the CEO if they like them. I think anonymous reports are less respected, too. I have worked at a notable charity where my director had 5 grievances outstanding against them, and the Board made them CEO!! Because they were on their side.

I’m trustee. A few things that would be a challenge-
—trustees don’t “work” for the company. The chair manages the CEo, yes, but they will not undertake a HR process or similar, although they can and should ask for this to happen. but- any of you could do the same. Consider why you think the board would be more successful?
—it would be quite easy to block the funding for an independent review

• whilst boards deal with whistleblowing the actual nature of this is more operational (a bad manager) than they would expect to deal with

Show me one example! Hilarious. Such brainrot from the Daily Mail.

I work in the sector and this sort of attitude drives me crazy. Do you think the poeple that work for charities deserve to be paid significantly less than in other sectors? We still have bills to pay and we are professionals. Salaries can be a high part of charitable expenditure, particularly in research! Who do you think, you know, does the research? Do you want the poeple looking after your poorly parents to be on the living wage? Do you think charities making impactful differences to the lives of the most needy should be staffed only by volunteers, or prevented from growing in case they spend too much on overheads? No other organisation could survive the level of financial scrutiny charities go through. Please support them.

To the op, the poster who is a trustee is right, this needs to be initially resolved as an operational issue, unless your manager is the CEO. If it isn't resolved you can then flag to the board as it starts to become a reputational issue for the organisation, and therefore falls within the trustee remit. But they will want you to have tried to resolve it internally first.

An anonymous letter is not the style of a "very senior" staff member...but you must feel very beaten down to think this is your only solution. How small is the team? You need to be shouting your achievements from the rooftop and have other senior staff speak for you when you're not in the room. Do you know the Trustees? Ask to speak for 5min at the next Trustee meeting, to give an update on your successful project; perhaps phrasing it as 'this worked so well, I've adapted the approach so we can roll it out across the business'. This gives you an 'in', a way to network and get people talking about you and it puts a face to the name for the Trustees.

I used to be Trustee of a charity and we would have welcomed this approach. An anonymous letter wouldn't be taken as seriously as someone with a genuine grievance. It would be investigated, but it wouldn't have a the same weight as someone putting a name to the complaint, as there would be a suspicion that it was just sour grapes/someone with a grudge. You could try calling the Chair of Trustees and saying all you've said here, including the fear that you don't want to raise a grievance, but do want the unacceptable behaviour of your boss to stop.

FWIW, the Trustees are likely already aware of your boss's behaviour (which is not a reason not to complain). It was blatantly obvious the boss in our organisation was ill equiped for the job - he was grossly incompetent, bullied staff, manipulated some to get them on side, while punishing those who disagreed with him...It's really hard to get rid of those types of people, especially as a Trustee. You have to tread a very fine line and follow procedures to the letter, which takes time.

I work in the sector , if your in a senior position surley you can speak up to someone ? I think they would listen more.
The sector is renowned for sadly mainly men getting into these positions and behaving like this. I'm under one as we speak , but he's getting managed out.
Also depending on the charity depends on what the board would do , some would just ignore the letter completely.

Sadly, whistleblowers rarely come out of it well. As a charity board chair, I would read your anonymous letter, be worried by it and may even believe what you wrote, but unless there was hard evidence there would be little that I and the board could do to get rid of the CEO. I considered applying for a post as the whistleblowing board champion for our local NHS trust when it was advertised, as I have some experience in that area, but the more I thought, the more I realised that it was just a sop after a bad scandal and cover-up and that there would be almost nothing that a champion could do to encourage or help whistleblowers in the face of bad practice and resistance to change. I'd be looking for another job if I were you and failing that, be very alert to covering your back and biggin yourself up. Sorry!

Bollocks!!!’

I know people who work for charities

I know people who work for charities!
id be happy if they earn a living wage and not above!

??? What if they’re the CFO? What CFO are you going to get for living wage? 😂😂😂

I am the CFO 😂. So do I work in the corporate sector for a top wage, or the charity sector for a living wage? Hmmmm. The charity sector needs good people to ensure those that need help get the best help. To bring people into the sector you need to pay above living wage! Charities can be huge organisations to run and they need funding.