The CBI chief admitted he doesn’t know if he can restore trust while outlining how he plans to boost his culture amid the sexual misconduct scandal engulfing the business lobby group.
Brian McBride made his statement in an open letter to members outlining its response to the findings of the review, which was conducted by a law firm, into its handling of allegations and culture at the CBI.
Law firm Fox Williams said there were few instances in which senior leadership within the CBI was aware of allegations made before they were published by the Guardian.
The law firm found that among these, a member of the executive committee of the Central Bank of Iraq was aware of a complaint about the behavior of a member of the board of directors, which was filed with him directly.
It added that no other board member was aware of the complaint at the time.
Mr McBride admitted that the CBI’s “most serious” mistake was “trying to find a solution to sexual harassment cases when we should have removed these offenders from our business”.
The law firm made several recommendations, including appointing a chief personnel officer to the board.
The Central Bank of Iraq suspended all membership and policy activity on Friday after dozens of key members suspended cooperation with the group or resigned.
The impetus for the exodus was an allegation of rape made by a second worker, published in the Guardian newspaper that day.
Among those leaving CBI are NatWest, Aviva and the John Lewis Partnership – all of which are led by women.
The full open letter:
An open letter from Brian McBride, President of the Central Bank of Iraq, to all members.
Dear Members and Partners,
I wanted to talk to each and every one of you directly and frankly about the crisis that engulfed the Central Bank of Iraq. about how this organization, for nearly 60 years, has been an active and proud champion of British industry, has let down its people, and deservedly lost faith in the outcome. And about the steps we’re taking to give you a reason to consider trusting us again.
Whether that is possible, I simply don’t know. This, of course, is decided by each of you. Whatever decision you each make, I believe it remains necessary and valuable that we share directly with you, our members, and the industry as a whole, everything we have learned about what went wrong in our organization, and what we could have done better to prevent these terrible incidents from happening. These findings are based on both our own analysis, and on independent investigations carried out at the request of the CBI Board of Directors by law firm Fox Williams, when the allegations were first brought to us by The Guardian.
Senior leaders and members of the CBI Board of Directors, as you can imagine, have experienced many difficult emotions since those events, the most serious of which date back a few years, became known to us. The greatest of these sentiments is the collective sense of shame, for having so severely failed the passionate, ambitious, and passionate people who came to work at CBI. They rightly expected to be able to do this in a safe environment, and we let them down.
When the initial allegations surfaced, this sense of shame was accompanied by bewilderment. Bewilderment, because we, both as a board of directors and as a senior leadership team, believed that the corporate culture at CBI was actually strong, and among the best. We have strived to create an open, supportive, and modern workplace. In fact, our people often tell us how much they enjoy working at CBI, while outside organizations tell us we have one of the best teams they’ve ever had the experience of working alongside. Our people are proud of their work in representing Britain’s industrial needs, for example, the vital assistance CBI staff have given the Government in designing business support measures during the Covid crisis, and in many others.
In retrospect, we now know we were complacent. We made mistakes in how we organized the work, which led to disastrous consequences.
The challenge of the work we do, with its unique combination of working closely with government and at a senior level with British business, attracts many of the country’s brightest, most energetic and capable people. But, as we’ve learned, it sometimes attracts the wrong people, too. Our systems for managing culture and preventing and eliminating harm were inadequate. Individually, some—but not all—of these organizational shortcomings may seem small. But, all together, they have multiplied to cause great harm to some of our people, and then to the CBI as a whole.
We have not put in place adequate safeguards to protect our people from those who seek to harm and we have not reacted properly when problems arise as a result.
We fail to filter culturally toxic people during the hiring process. We failed to conduct proper cultural preparation of employees. Some of our managers have been promoted too quickly without the necessary prior and ongoing training to protect our cultural values, and to react properly when those values are violated. In performance appraisal, we paid more attention to competence than to behavior. Our HR function was not represented at the board level, which reduced escalation paths to senior levels in the company when it was most needed. And we tried to solve sexual harassment cases when we should have removed these criminals from our business.
In retrospect, this last point was our most egregious mistake, which led to women’s reluctance to formalize complaints. It allowed a very small minority of employees with regressive—and in some cases, hateful—attitudes toward their female colleagues to feel more confident in their behavior, and more confident of not being detected. She led victims of harassment or violence to believe that their only option was to report their experiences to a newspaper.
The last straw was laid when complaints were made about our general manager by a female employee in January this year, although in no way related to the more serious allegations that surfaced a few years ago. After the investigation, it was found that he made one of the female employees uncomfortable, and the necessary measures were taken. However, it was only when further allegations against him arose and were reported to the CBI Board of Directors that we immediately suspended the managing director, commissioned an independent investigation by Fox Williams into those allegations, for which he was eventually removed from the CBI. .
To exacerbate these problems, we communicated poorly and ineffectively with you and our members, and this has placed an undue burden on your shoulders. We were bound by legal constraints to respect the process and advance independent investigations, but this cannot be an excuse for our failure to communicate and act clearly. Simply put, we have lost our voice in the storm that has created around the organization.
In doing so, commentators concluded that the organization was half-hearted and venomous, and that serious allegations of rape had been covered up, when in fact they were not reported to senior leadership or the CBI board of directors until exposed by the Trustee. I will tell you that every member of the CBI leadership team is shocked and horrified at the substance of these allegations. Our collective failure to fully protect vulnerable personnel, to ensure that alleged incidents do not occur in the first place, and to put in place the appropriate mechanisms to rapidly escalate incidents of this nature to the senior leadership level, these failures are the most important driver of the shame I spoke to you about earlier.
So, we have a lot of work to do, and as you would expect, we’ve already started that work. Attached to this letter is a summary of the recommendations of the Fox Williams investigation. We will fully implement it. We also take the following steps:
Effective immediately, the CBI will implement a zero-tolerance approach to sexual harassment and bullying behavior. More broadly, we want to set high standards of behavior and a number of people have been fired for failing to meet those standards.
As part of this policy, all CBI employees and members of the Board of Directors will receive mandatory training covering bullying and harassment prevention, employee relations best practices, mental health awareness, and employment law. This training will become a permanent and ongoing feature of our workplace. Similarly, our recruitment and placement processes for new staff will be reviewed, in line with these measures.
We have asked Wren Newton-Smith to be our General Manager, and she has shown great courage in accepting this position at a very difficult time. Many of you know Rin personally and would welcome her back. We have asked Rain to return to CBI, not only because of her very great economic and political experience, but because the CBI staff trusts and respects her deeply. With the support of others, Rain will lead the necessary changes in the CBI. I am so grateful to her for stepping up at this time. In this review process, Rain will be directly assisted by CBI Board Member Jill Ader, Senior Counsel and former President at Egon Zehnder.
We have already begun the process of hiring a Chief Human Resources Officer (CPO), who will be part of the executive team and report directly to the Board. Prior to this appointment, a temporary CPO will be appointed in place as soon as possible, from outside the CBI. Working with Rain Newton-Smith and the CBI Council, the CPO will ensure that the policies discussed here, across prevention, recruitment and enforcement of zero tolerance are deeply embedded in the culture of the CBI.
We will also be rebuilding the CBI Board after previously planned sessions, which we will announce soon.
We have established a permanent, independent and confidential whistleblowing channel outside of the CBI for people to raise past and future concerns about misconduct. To give more confidence that colleagues can progress, we have now also appointed an HR Advisor who will also independently screen any further complaints of misconduct by colleagues while we carry out the broader review, overhaul of our internal processes.
We are moving forward with these changes at a rapid pace, but carefully and thoroughly. We will discuss our progress with you at the Extraordinary Members Meeting in June. Before and, in fact, after this meeting, your continued guidance, advice, and support on these changes is greatly appreciated. This will ensure that we continue to have the input and insight needed to accomplish this critical mission.
The CBI and each of you, our members, have been together, for decades, one of the most effective industry representation bodies in the world. I think it is very beneficial, both for the business sector and for the government, to provide the services that the CBI has provided in the past. I hope we can effectively offer our services alongside you again in the future, albeit as a much changed and improved CBI app. Whether it is possible or not, I hope that what I have shared with you today will be useful in the work you are doing to build great cultures in your organizations.
sincerely,
Brian McBride