Although I doubt that my previous employer would be a fan of my blog, I feel that writing it helps me and others who may be going through a similar experience.  It has also rekindled my love of writing, so I will continue in my own unassuming way to try to entertain and inform my readers about aspects of my experience in this particular organisation.

This post is about the importance of trust and confidentiality.  There is a perception that the public should be able to trust the public service to respect confidentiality, including data protection requirements.  After all, the public service is funded out of taxpayers’ money so logically it should consider itself to bear some responsibility in this area.

BREACHES OF TRUST

In my own case, there appeared to be no respect for the confidentiality of my personal information by the time I worked for the bullying manager.  I would walk around the town I live in and hear people I did not know discussing my age and approximate salary.  Although some attention-seeking people might like this, I did not and considered it to be a breach of trust and the organisation’s responsibilities under data protection law.

The bullying itself was to me a further breach of trust because no employee should have to encounter this in a job which they were perceived as performing efficiently and effectively. Although I am certainly not pretending to be perfect, I believe I was good at my job and should have been listened to.  [I raised concerns both during the bullying and in the few months leading up to my resignation but no-one seemed to be concerned.]

I also heard people discussing the fact that, during a period of sick leave caused by the bullying, managers had talked about having to terminate my employment contract.  No-one had thought it necessary to discuss this with me.  I see this as another breach of trust – although to be honest by the time this happened I had very little faith in the ethics of the organisation, especially because of some of the activities I had either seen or heard about.

As I have mentioned, my relative was contacted without my permission.  The things she told my last manager were gossiped about by him within my hearing.  I see both the contact and the gossiping as breaches of trust and confidentiality.    The organisation said he apparently “could not remember” this.  My relative seems to enjoy talking about people in a negative way but refuses to take responsibility for any outcome.  Her involvement in this became very serious for me, not only in terms of my job and day-to-day life, but also my personal safety. Although it seemed to start as something resembling “bitchy little girl” nastiness, things became much darker.

I have mentioned in earlier posts the inappropriate handling of requests for SAR (data protection) prints of individual cases.  I believe this to be a matter of public interest.

BREACHES OF CONFIDENTIALITY

There have over the years been some breaches of confidentiality where details have been passed to people who should not have received them, with serious consequences in some cases.  Although, again, none of these would have been intentional, they would have affected public confidence in the organisation.  Part of the reason such situations happened could I feel be the pressure to increase performance which was placed on employees.

RESOLUTION

In cases such as mine, where I have a number of grievances against the organisation I worked for, I believe that one civil servant has the role of dealing with this.   This person is employed by the large government department responsible for the organisation which employed me. Since raising my own grievances with the organisation, I have become aware that in such cases the employer’s representative appears to want to know what the complainant knows, ie presumably, what the employer would want covered up. Hence, I have made reference to some rather unsavoury matters in my blog. The shenanigans I alluded to between some (obviously not all) of the managers are further breaches of trust, in my opinion, especially during paid working time. It appears to be believed that these can be answered because they happened some time ago.  However, there is still the threatening behaviour to consider, for which there can be no excuse, and most of which is much more recent. It was generally known about when I was there but I have no doubt that this would all be denied, although the truth often comes out in the end!  After all, it did with my allegation of being bullied.

I understand this civil servant also believes it will take some time for me to write my book so there is no need to take immediate action. Additionally, it seems that she (I believe this is a woman) feels I may at some stage breach confidentiality, eg by identifying the organisation which employed me.  It appears that any arrangements to attempt to reach agreement are entirely up to this civil servant, and nothing anyone else says, eg the organisation I worked for, is taken into account.  I believe it is rare for grievances brought against this civil service department to reach the employment tribunal stage.

This leads me to 3 conclusions:

1. This is an extremely rare civil servant who has complete autonomy in her job.  All the civil servants I knew no matter what their grade had to answer to managers  who had managers who had managers . . . and so on
2. It is, of course, possible that this civil servant is given autonomy so that if a decision is made which more senior managers dislike, her head is on the block and her manager’s career is not affected!  [Ooh, how cynical I have become!]
3. This method of bringing the whole unfortunate situation to any sort of conclusion appears to depend on finding out what someone knows, ie how much trouble they could cause the organisation. I see this as a defensive action. A better solution in such cases might be to arrive at an amicable agreement in which the organisation acts transparently by admitting to certain failings, looks toward remedying harm done and thus attempts to learn from the situation.  With such honesty, both sides could then feel something positive had been achieved. Instead, there appears to be a desire in such cases to brush everything under the carpet if and when it is decided that the time is right.

This is not a game to me.  There were managerial failings which meant that I was no longer able to continue in the job I did to the best of my ability for a number of years.  I was a very small cog in a large wheel, but it has affected me psychologically and physically and the organisation appears to want to ignore this. The consequences for me are ongoing and it has also had an impact on my family life.

I would now like to turn to the Civil Service Code:-

“The Civil Service Code sets out the standards of behaviour expected of all civil servants to uphold the Civil Service’s core values, which are integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality.

In this code:

• ‘integrity’ is putting the obligations of public service above your own personal interests
• ‘honesty’ is being truthful and open
• ‘objectivity’ is basing your advice and decisions on rigorous analysis of the evidence
• ‘impartiality’ is acting solely according to the merits of the case and serving equally well governments of different political persuasions

These core values support good government and ensure the achievement of the highest possible standards in all that the Civil Service does. This in turn helps the Civil Service to gain and retain the respect of ministers, Parliament, the public and its customers.”  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-service-code/the-civil-service-code

It is of course possible that an MP or even a government minister might lose a certain amount of respect for a public service organisation with the sort of culture I have described in his or her constituency.

NEXT POST: THE EFFECTS OF BEING BULLIED