... but the case has also underscored how potentially destructive, reputationally and financially, harassment issues within a workplace can be.
Companies are already thinking about their processes. If the harasser is the chief executive, what sort of process and what kind of culture encourages staff – senior or junior – to come forward with their allegations and ultimately by-pass their boss and risk their own position and prospects?
Intelligent boards will, however, recognise that they have to devise a response to the DJs affair because the consequences for their own company of complacency could be equally unpleasant.
The DJs experience shows that having a code of conduct isn’t sufficient if the transgressor is senior and intimidating enough. Staff, junior and senior, have to be comfortable and confident that they can come forward with complaints against even the most senior of executives and have them taken seriously and acted upon.
The other lesson that should be drawn, and appears to being absorbed by at least some companies, is that no individual is so valuable that their behaviour can be over-looked. To its credit the DJs board did dismiss – without trying to hide or disguise the reasons for doing so – a chief executive widely credited with the group’s resurgence and its consistently high levels of performance. McInnes is/was an outstanding retailer.
In the light of the DJs experience, one would expect that boards and senior executives, when evaluating their employees, put as much, and hopefully more, emphasis on character as talent.
That’s not just about avoiding the consequences of appointing or elevating a lecherous executive but, as the DJs saga appears to signal, about the strength and courage of those who could, and should, have either stopped the behaviour in its tracks or alerted the DJs board to the nature and behaviour of its chief executive.