Featured Research Summary: Preventing Retaliation in the Workplace

Exclusive Research by the HR Research Institute and EVERFI

According to data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), retaliation is the most frequently filed charge of job discrimination nationwide. Data from fiscal year 2018 shows that retaliation claims are significantly higher than any other type of workplace discrimination or misconduct claim. Not only is retaliation exceedingly common, but its incidence is getting worse, quickly.

According to a 2018 survey of U.S. employees by the Ethics and Compliance Initiative, the percentage of employees who say they have experienced retaliation after reporting workplace concerns has doubled since 2013, from 22% to 44%.

To gain greater insight into this growing problem, HR.com’s HR Research Institute partnered with EVERFI, a leader in digital education on critical workplace culture issues, to conduct a survey of HR professionals to examine retaliation in today’s workplaces. The main objectives of the study were to:
 

Although retaliation is the most frequently filed workplace discrimination charge, many organizations—about one-third— have no anti-retaliation policies in place. They are more likely to say they have a policy in place for harassment and discrimination (91%), code of conduct (88%), performance management (80%), and workplace violence (78%).

Moreover, among those HR professionals whose organizations have an anti-retaliation policy, only 57% say they provide training to all employees about retaliation. Comparatively, 81% of those at an organization with an anti-harassment and discrimination policy say they provide training about the policy.

Most organizations that have an anti-retaliation policy include it in their employee handbook (82%). Other frequently-utilized “check-the-box” approaches include highlighting it during employee onboarding (67%) or making it available on their internal website, like an intranet page (56%).

Fewer respondents say their organizations take more active, direct, and possibly more effective, approaches to communicating their policy. Just 44% say they use an online training course to communicate the policy, 39% say they conduct in-person training, workshops, or meetings, and 22% say it is disseminated through communications from senior leaders.
 

 

Results show that certain groups of employees tend to be retaliated against more than others. The majority of respondents say that the person on the receiving end of retaliation is sometimes or often: 
 

The survey also asked respondents how often different types of employees are the ones retaliating. The majority (60%) say the employee retaliating is sometimes or often the reporter’s immediate supervisor, and many (46%) say the same about a leader inside the reporter’s chain of command, but not the reporter's immediate supervisor. About half (51%) say it is a peer-level colleague to the reporter. Employees retaliating against a supervisor is not as common, but more than a third (35%) say it still occurs sometimes or often.