Like most people I have been appalled by the recent report on child sex abuse in Rotherham where, for those that may not be aware of it, over 1400 mostly children, some as young as 11, had been sexually abused over a 16 year period. Shocking though that figure is for a single town, what I find even more shocking are the circumstances that enabled this to take place. What were those in authority doing?
It seems there were 3 prevalent attitudes that enabled things to develop on the scale they did:-
- A police attitude that this was normal behaviour for that class of girl – poor, socially deprived and vulnerable.
- “Political correctness” and a fear that exposure could cause inter-racial tension and conflict. (Reports indicate the victims, mainly white girls in social care homes were plied with drugs and alcohol before being trafficked to cities across northern England and gang-raped by groups of men, predominately of Pakistani heritage.)
- The belief that it was not a major problem. Something that persisted even after 17 year old Laura Wilson was murdered in 2010 for threatening to expose a sexual relationship.
If that is not enough though, people’s anger was further flamed by the fact that the Police and Crimes Commissioner who, prior to moving into that role had been the council member responsible for children’s services as well as sitting on the South Yorkshire Police Authority, initially refused to resign. He actually even resigned from the political party he represented before he was thrown out and claimed that he was “the most appropriate person to hold this office at this current time.” Despite widespread calls to resign, including from the Prime Minister, it took 3 weeks before he actually did so.
Who knows exactly what really motivated him to cling on, but the indications are that he really believed he was not at fault. He is reported to have said, “Had I known then what I know now I could have done more. As an elected member I came into this role to make a difference. At every stage I've done my utmost to protect those people. I have taken lessons learned in that office and brought them to bear in my new role with South Yorkshire Police.” (Source: Independent Newspaper 27/8/14). Despite all the opprobrium, he neverseemed to understand the basic legal truism that “ignorance is no excuse” or that his failure to have identified the scale of the problem was itself tantamount to an admission of incompetence at the very least. In a nutshell, he did not think he was accountable for what had happened.
Yet he is by no means an isolated example of such intransigence. It seems that, more and more, accountability is an alien concept, particularly amongst those in high positions. BP and the Deep Horizons disaster, and the failure of the big banks provide glaring recent examples and this is another.
Webster’s dictionary defines accountable in part as, “Liable to be called to account; answerable.” In any organisation an employee has a job description and clear expectations of what is required of them. And along with that comes a clear understanding that, if they do not meet those requirements they will forfeit their job. Yet it seems that Shaun Wright did not understand that and thought it did not apply to him as Police and Crimes Commissioner.
Yet I cannot help wondering if lack of accountability is not actually the flip side of the employee engagement coin. It seems to me to be inevitable that, if people do not care and take pride in their work, they will never really accept the concept of accountability either. What do you think?
Now will you give more emphasis to your employee engagement efforts? You can start by ensuring that you set a good example; after all that is true leadership.
Bay is the founder and director of Zealise, a company created to help larger small to large business organisations to properly value their people and thereby inspire them to optimise their self-worth and so engage them that they transform organisational performance and bottom-line results. Bay is also the author of several books, including “Lean Organisations Need FAT People” and “7 Deadly Toxins of Employee Engagement.”