Staff covering up issues - what to do?

[PrettyGreyEyes]

I work for an SME (10 years +) and manage the back office staff at HO, including, sales admin. marketing, finance, logistics etc..

Since our new MD was appointed, the admin team have deliberately not reported customer complaints, service and system failures and various other minor cock ups. I know about this only because of a whistle blower being concerned enough to tell me.

Now, the question is, what would you do?

Since the new MD started, he's made rather a song and dance of any failures, making them public (internally) and i feel, embarassing the staff member concerned instead of dealing with it quietly as we used to when the old MD was here.

Im supposed to report any non compliance/conformance to the Board but cant if nobody tells me anything anymore for fear of what might happen.

How do i turn this around without outing the whistle blower or upsetting staff/MD?

The board can overrule the MD.
for a couple of months very gently 'go for acoffee' with board members individually going for the absolute most trustworthy first. Are you in an industry where compliance is regulated. OR work hard to identify patterns and solutions instead of individual problems.. Eg 'i' d like to focus on process reviews as we have a series of risks around process variations and adherance' *rather than 'heres a list of fuck ups and who did them'
You are going to have to be the buffer here and compile honest reports to you, into patterns for the asshole MD

Not regulated no and the two other board members live abroad so limited access to them.

Ive done process reviews before and i think these are part of the problem as 'key' cock-up person felt victimised and embarassed.

Its tricky.

If you are witness to song and dance shit, say 'that's a really great example of what we need to achieve, thanks for being so open and helpful in allowing us to look at this. You will have to reposition each fuck up aggressively as a brilliant sharing of information. Thank people personally afterwards.

You will have to reposition each fuck up aggressively as a brilliant sharing of information

Yes! I used to do this before new MD took over and it worked well. I may need to simply cut new MD out of things for now and see if that helps.

If there are compliance issues you may need to think carefully about calling it / thinking about it as a "song and a dance". The MD sounds heavy handed, but their role is to protect the company from reputational harm. Non-compliance to standards is a big risk, the company could be subjected to crippling fines and exposure to bad publicity. I've worked in 2 heavily regulated industries and regulations have become really strict.

Moving the MD towards a no- blame culture whilst highlighting the importance of quality is a good way to go. Maybe using elearning and other training aids and making it (semi) enjoyable.

Sorry missed that you aren't regulated - although that's quite surprising nowadays. Most business need some sort of controls in place to assure customer protections and product quality.

Good luck!