Moral Dilemma

[MyPurpleHeart]

Hi Everyone, me again! You might remember me from the thread about the nightmare employee

I have a whole new drama now, this one I cant fix but I feel incredibly guilty.

I work in a marketing firm and manage several teams

One of the supervisors of the teams I supervise has managed to get himself if debt. Massive, spiraling, nightmare debt.

Not my business however, he has borrowed money from 4 other team members and paid none of them back. Nor does he intend to i think (he goes out for dinners every other night with his new GF and spent half an hour telling everyone hes booked a fancy holiday next year)

One of the team members is now financially struggling as hes lent him thousands, some he borrowed from one of his family members. This guy is directly managed by the supervisor and was pressured into it.

One of the other team members has been asking for his money back for a year, they almost came to blows last week because he was going on holiday and needed it to exchange for euros and supervisor said he wouldn't be paying him

Someone else who used to work here has threatened to turn up at the building and make noise if he doesnt pay him

I told my director it was becoming an issue months ago and nothing was done.

Today we had a chat about mental health and something the advisor said made me think that maybe I need to confidentially report what i know to HR.

I know the company can do nothing, but I worry that this situation is only going to get worse and the risk of people resorting to extremes to get paid is rising.

I made an anonymous report to HR this morning and now im wracked with guilt. I don't want to cause problems for someone who is spiraling out of control as it is, but I cant sit and ignore this situation anymore. People have told me in confidence for a reason and my MD has done nothing

I'm just looking for some opinions as everyone's feedback on the last post I made really helped. What would you have done?

Don't you think that a supervisor who pressure their team into lending money and then doesn't return it in a timely fashion deserves everything coming to them? Why on earth do you feel guilty?

This needs to be dealt with. He only was able to borrow money from them as he knows them in the course of work. It is partly your responsibility to put pressure on him to pay or he could lose his job. He's bringing down morale and affecting otter staff's personal lives. It's not on.

I remember this one girl at my work borrowed loads of money off a bunch of people, me included. She kept not paying and one manager said if she didn't pay he would stop giving her shifts. This was a zero hours contract place. It worked thank god. Not sure if it would or not in your case.

You shouldn’t feel guilty at all. This man is taking advantage of colleagues. Leadership should be speaking to all involved, and take action against the culprit. If this became public it would reflect poorly on the company, so there are misconduct grounds

Sometimes it feels hard doing the right thing.
But you have definitely done the right thing .... no question.

Not my business however, he has borrowed money from 4 other team members and paid none of them back.

I don't agree that it isn't your business - someone you manage has coerced people in the team to give him money. There is no way that would be acceptable at my place of work and the manager would have first responsibility for dealing with it. You should have been chasing up your director on it and gone to HR straight away.

How did you reach any level of management and NOT know how to deal with this?
You did the right thing although a bit late and lame in the game.
Don’t let the ball drop, follow up and stay on top of this.

If anyone should feel bad it’s your boss.

You were feeling the strain and told the h&s lady - not your fault she went to HR - tell your director you didn’t realise she would do that

What? Both the OP and her director should have gone to HR themselves as soon as they knew about this. I think HR will be looking very closely at both of them when they investigate this.

Something similar happened where I work, the one borrowing the money actually had a drug problem.

OH mumsnet what do I do now?

The H&S girl I reported it to was fired on the spot (for something unrelated) before relaying it to HR

I went back to my MD and stated the significance of this and that it needed to be dealt with, he said he would.

My MD went on holiday for two weeks and left me to sign off the monthly paid salary, and I found rock solid evidence that this supervisor was adding extra hours onto the pay of one of the people he owed money to.

I stopped the extra pay and reported it to my MD.

He has had a quiet chat with the supervisor and swept it all under the carpet.

HR report to my MD who is not even a little bit interested. Meanwhile Ive come out of this looking like a trouble maker

My only avenue left is the owner, who's rarely in the country.

I don't think you can do much at this point. You have made MD aware, he said he's dealt with it. You've stopped the fraud.
Personally I'd be looking for another job as this MD is clearly terrible and not dealing with things in a proper way. But if you report to HR you'll get little satisfaction because all they can do is go to the MD really and say you need to deal with this and he will say he has.

What a shitshow, OP. How can no senior team member recognise both the business (financial) and reputational risk of this situation?! How do your contracts/employee handbook define misconduct and gross misconduct, and what are the repercussions? My first thought was that someone in a position of authority abused their power over a direct report to coerce them into giving them money. Surely that is gross misconduct? Not to mention the current fraud you've discovered in payroll.

I think you need to put everything you know in writing, including a timeline of events, to the HR Director, as a matter of urgency. Also, look for a new job. It doesn't matter that you haven't done anything wrong, if this is the attitude of your company, you're right, you've already marked out as a trouble maker and they'll be looking for ways to push you out.