It appears that the CEO of Boeng fell victim to his own policy of whistle blowing when he was forced to vacate his position for having an affair with a cow-orker.
Now, there was no official corporate policy for having relations with a colleague, however, given the high standards he set for everyone, he had no choice but to voluntarily resign.
I’m not here to debate the pros and cons of that kind of policy.
I want to know if you’re the kind of person who would endorse, nay, even participate in a corporate whistle blowing policy*.
Now I’ve never worked in a food service or medical industry where people’s lives may be placed at risk if things are not done accroding to established safety standards. I imagine that I would be very upset to learn that a fellow cow-orker was doing something that endangered people’s health or life. I’d definately confront that kind of behaviour directly with the guilty party. If that got no results I’d almost certainly escalate. But short of that, I’d let it slide.
In my corporate world (IT) I’ve seen people get away with crap as their team member and as their supervisor. In both cases I simply cut them out of the loop. As a colleague, I’d avoid relying on them as a team member. As a team lead, after sufficient attempts to rectify their behaviour, I’d simply minimize their contribution to such a minimum that they’d never be on a critical path to anything and thus become marginalized. Eventually, I’d have them redeployed to another team/project.
But at no time in the above situation, would I do any kind of whistle blowing.
You?
*(As an aside, I suspect we’ll be hearing more and more of these kinds of policies in the workplace as a backlash against the recent famous accounting irregularities and various similar corporate corruption.)
What exactly are we talking about here?
Whistleblowing, in a case such as “The Insider”, or the Phoenix Memo, that sort of thing? Or just ratting on people dipping their pen in company ink (Did Boeing have a rule against that?)
If the former, sure, the law is the law. If we are just talking about indiscretions, affairs, Jim toking up in the bathroom on break (provided Jim does not work on nuclear weapons and is just a paper pusher), then no, not really my business, and would cause more problems than it solved.
Not talking about seriously illegal/dangerous kinds of transgressions. Though feel free to comment on how you might handle those as well.
No, according to the report on CNN, Boeing did not have a policy about fraternizing.
I’m going into medicine where there are a lot of policies in place to keep you from accidentally killing the patients. Double checking names before administering drugs, making sure residents have appropriate training and oversight when doing procedures, etc. If I had a co-worker who habitually violated those policies I would want to do something about it. That might involve speaking directly to the person, making an anonymous phone call to the appropriate authority, or something in between. The phone call would be a last resort but if necessary, I’d do it.
I would definitly be a whistleblower. In certain situations with certain people working for certain companies. So, it all depends on the circumstances.
When I was younger and a lot more idealistic, my standards were different. Now I’m more realistic about the kinds of things that can actually go wrong with work and more tolerant of minor transgressions.
I’ve never understood how people can accept things like being forced to work off the clock, be locked in overnight, being ordered to hush things up, etc.
I burned a few bridges making sure stupid shit didn’t happen again in my company. Not a career booster to be sure but then my facility is shutting down in a year.
Then I wouldn’t say anything unless I felt like the other part of of the couple was getting unfair advantages and I could prove it.
I have two tin whistles; one in C, and one in D. I can play The Irish Rover (The Dubliners/The Pogues), the whistle part of Over The Waterfall (Michelle Shocked), and Ta Mo Chleamhnas Deanta (Van Morrison). I need to learn more songs, but I haven’t gotten round to it yet. But, yeah; I’m a whistle blower.
