An old, cruel joke claimed David Beckham wore headphones at all times so a voice could remind him to “breathe in, breathe out”. Some things that should come naturally don’t.
You might think that a code of conduct for adult professionals attending a work-related social event, reminding them to “be considerate and respectful to each other” and “refrain from any unacceptable conduct” (defined elsewhere in the code), falls into the same category of advice as Beckham’s breathing tips.
But apparently such things are now necessary, as codes of conduct issued by bodies such as the Finance & Leasing Association (FLA) and the International Securities Lending Association (ISLA), among others, confirm. If attenders at social events were in any doubt about the wisdom of making “unwelcome sexual advances, whether verbal or physical”, or “sexist, racist, homophobic or other discriminatory jokes, slurs, insults or comments”, now they know. Just don’t.
The existence of these codes does not necessarily point to a profound moral awakening or new puritanism in the corporate world. It could simply be a case of legal advice: an insurance policy. In the same way, the words printed on a coffee cup declaring that the “contents may be hot” have no real educational value, but could help the business owner with a litigious scalded customer.
But what the codes do reveal is that there is still a problem with men at work. (Which is not to say that women can’t be sexist or racist and so on; it’s just that we know, don’t we, the direction from which most of the bad behaviour comes.)
A recent report from the House of Commons Treasury committee, Sexism in the City, drew on eyewitness accounts of prejudice and harassment still running rife in the financial services industry. “It is shocking to hear how prevalent sexual harassment and bullying, up to and including serious sexual assault and rape, still are in financial services, and how poorly firms handle allegations of such behaviours,” the report stated.
Maybe you won’t see many acts of violence committed at a corporate dinner. But so-called “micro-aggressions” and “banter” – tolerated, ignored or simply not recognised during the day – can bubble up at a social event, leading to embarrassment, distress and worse. Codes of conduct are being distributed as a preventive response.
Some sneerers are belittling attempts to improve “diversity, equality and inclusion” at work. But scandals such as those exposed at the CBI or the City’s Presidents Club dinner are precisely what you get when an aggressively male culture dominates. Awareness has to be raised, and behaviour has to change. Breathe in, breathe out.
How to explain businessmen behaving badly. Some men, it seems, struggle to reconcile the need to be ambitious and competitive in the workplace with the basic human requirement to respect other colleagues and behave decently. The crucial task is to understand the cultural (and professional) context you are operating in. A high-flyer may be rewarded and promoted for having a “killer instinct”, and then chastised for repeating that kind of behaviour in more relaxed or informal settings. Good employers will not tolerate the latter, even if that star performer is a big revenue earner.
As Alesha De-Freitas, head of policy, research and advocacy at the Fawcett Society, explained to the Treasury committee: “You have to be clear that sexual harassment is not just the horrific physical end of things; it is also about the things you say, the banter, the jokes and all of those things, which may well have been acceptable in the past. As a company you need to be really upfront and say: ‘We are not going to tolerate that any more.’”
From October this year there will be a new duty on employers to take “reasonable steps” to prevent sexual harassment of their employees in the workplace. The “Worker Protection Act” has been added as an amendment to the existing Equality Act. It will be enforced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
This will mean shining a light on bad behaviour, calling it out, confronting bad actors with the reality of what they have done, and supporting victims more courageously and generously. It follows, of course that there should be far fewer non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), the kind of silencing deals used in recent times by the CBI and others. These punish the victims while allowing the guilty to pursue their careers unharmed. (The Conservative peer Helena Morrissey told the Treasury committee she knew of two people who had been let go from their firms for sexual harassment yet were still certified on the Financial Conduct Authority register with unblemished records.)
We can no longer use “end of lockdown” as an excuse (if we ever could) for this failure to remember how to behave in groups. It is hard not to feel a bit depressed about the apparent inevitability of how some men seem compelled to act off site, often fuelled by wine, sometimes sober.
But people can change. There has been progress. Organisations are fairer, safer and healthier places than they were a generation or two ago. And yet – if the chaps need a pep talk (or code of conduct) before turning up for the annual awards dinner, there is still a lot of work to do. Boys will be boys but men can do better.
Stefan Stern is co-author of Myths of Management and the former director of the High Pay Centre
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