📤 An Open Letter to HR: Why Don’t Employees Trust You Enough to Speak Up?

📧 Workplace bullying leaves scars- but when it comes from HR, the damage cuts even deeper

😭 I have just finished a case where the employee was totally disemboweled by HR. HR is supposed to be a safe space. A place where people go for support, protection, and fairness. But for my client - and many employees, especially those facing bullying - HR isn’t a refuge, it’s another source of harm

😱 Instead of belief, they encounter dismissal. Instead of justice, silence

👩‍⚖️ When HR is seen as complicit - or worse, as protecting the people causing harm - the damage isn’t just personal. It’s organisational. It breeds disengagement, absenteeism, turnover. It creates trauma. And when that trauma is ignored or minimised, it becomes part of your culture

 🫸 If you’ve ever tried to “reduce risk” by quietly removing a complainant instead of holding a perpetrator accountable, then the trust issue isn’t theoretical - it’s already yours. And it’s bigger than you think

🚪You can’t rebuild credibility with wellbeing posters, “Speak Up” campaigns, or carefully worded leadership statements. Not when people have already seen what happens behind closed doors. When the ones who raised concerns are gone, and the ones who caused harm are still there

🫷 That’s how a culture of silence forms and it’s why you’re seeing low engagement, poor survey response rates, and a workforce that’s quietly checking out

💡 So how do you fix it?

You fix it by doing what people needed from you in the first place:

💥 Believe people when they come forward. Don’t interrogate them into silence

💥 Take visible action. Accountability behind closed doors doesn’t build trust. Transparency does

💥 Stop treating complainants like risks to be managed. They are people seeking protection. They are your uncles, aunts, sons & daughters

💥 Make it safe to speak up and mean it. Safety isn't a slogan. It's a lived experience

This isn’t a PR issue. It’s a trauma issue. And trauma doesn’t heal through messaging. It heals through action, integrity, and consistency

❓ So instead of asking,

 “How can we get people to speak up?”

 ⁉️ Start asking:

 “Why don’t they trust us enough to?”

❔ And then - do something about the answer - so us lawyers aren't picking up the bodies at the bottom of the cliff.