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V O L . X X V N O. X X V I N OV E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 9 28 A s a board member, are you listen- ing? It's a simple question with a potentially complicated answer. In the #metoo era it's hard to really know what is happening with employee attitudes and behavior in your organization. Does your organization have a professionally designed yearly cultural survey with carefully selected feed-back mechanisms and a follow-up process? Does your organization review the yearly changes in that survey to identify improvements and critical problem areas and report those action steps to the organization? Are there any other avenues for employees to confidentially communicate with upper management without fear of reprisal? Properly designed surveys provide invaluable feedback and monitoring sys- tems for management and the board. A common request in today's world is to speak up if you see something that doesn't appear to be right. But many employees are fearful of speak- ing up about workplace conditions and situations involving their boss or other co-workers — understandably. Whether you're at a publicly traded company, a privately held firm or a nonprofit, your company should have a code of busi- ness conduct and ethics that includes communication channels for reporting suspected violations of that code. Regardless of the size of the organi- zation, a code of conduct is an important document that will provide behavioral boundaries and should provide chan- nels for communication to the top of the organization. If the organization has a business ethics officer or a chairman of the audit committee then that code should require employees to seek guid- ance and report violations of the code, applicable law or regulations arising in the conduct of the company's business or occurring on the company's property. Ideally, any violations should be reported to an employee's supervisor. If violations involve that employee's super- visor, then the organization should pro- vide a separate avenue for such report- ing. If the organization has a business ethics officer, then that person provides an ideal alternative communication channel. If the organization doesn't have an ethics officer, then another good alternative is to report the problem to the chairman of the audit committee. Easy to say, but what if an employee is concerned about confidentiality? To protect the employee's feed- back and provide confidentiality there should also be statements in the code of conduct allowing anonymous feed- back and language prohibiting retali- ation against any reporting employee. How can you help ensure that the mechanisms mentioned above have a fair chance of succeeding before they are implemented? Just ask a selected group of employees through some informal "listening sessions" to give you feedback on the proposed tools you intend to use for listening before they are implemented. One way to check on the validity of your design process is to simply ask a diagonal slice of the employee popula- tion, say four to six employees, for a lunch or some other event that would fit the company's culture. e only rules for such a session are, one, that each employee agrees that the sessions are totally confidential to any persons outside that lunch group and, two, that they will not experience any retaliation for any information provided at the ses- sion. If the employees agree with those rules, the likelihood of the management person learning very valuable informa- tion about employees' attitudes, desires and concerns is extremely high. A commonly heard concern from employees is that they "never hear any results from the feedback we give on surveys intended for management." An easy way to deal with that concern is to simply tell employees that employee feedback results will be communicated to them on or before "X" date — AND simply deliver on that promise. Ward Graffam was the founding chairman of the Maine International Trade Center and was chairman and CEO of UNUM UK. He has served on numerous boards. He can be reached at wgraffam @ aol.com B Y W A R D G R A F F A M H OW TO Pay attention as a board member Mainebiz invites you to network with the future. Tickets are $45 and the price of a ticket includes 1 free drink! Aura / 121 Center St., Portland November 14 5:00–7:00 pm FOLLOW US @MBEVENTS #MBNext19 KRISTINA CANNON DANA EIDSNESS NICK RIMSA AND RJ ANZELC CHAD AND NICOLE HUMPHREY JAMES MORIN, DEVIN MCNEILL, AND CHARLES FRIEDMAN LISA LIBERATORE JOSHUA HENRY F O R M O R E I N F O A N D T O R E G I S T E R : www.mainebiz.biz/next PRESEN T ING SP ONSORS To make a Donation to the Next List Alumni Scholarship Fund through the Maine Community Foundation, visit mainecf. org and click on Make a Gift. A code of conduct is an important document that will provide behavioral boundaries and channels for communication.

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