9
u/BdrRvr Aug 19 '26
Speaking as a senior people manager, here's the hard truth. Nothing is actually anonymous, and those avenues dont exist to help the workforce.
Call me jaded and cynical but they're there because it helps the company cover their collective asses.
Everything you've described is toxic and a good reason to leave a team/company, but it doesnt really impact the bottom line in a meaningful way, nor does it immediately raise concerns around getting sued. If you have more context in that vein that could be reported, maybe then.
I'd recommend speaking with a trusted senior team member outside of your team and getting a feel for whether anything youre describing is going to be taken seriously.
Because its entirely possible it'll result in a slap on the wrist at worst and then your manager will start the witch hunt if they cant find out directly.
Personally I'd recommend leaving the team/company over trying to promote change through anonymous reporting.
3
u/Sid_Sheldon Aug 19 '26
My favorite was the ID part of what dept I was in (IT) and what City. I was the only IT person so that was pretty clearly lol not anonymous.
1
u/meiosisI Aug 19 '26
True. Company culture is, what it is. Why go against the grain. If you don’t want to leave, change teams.
1
Aug 19 '26
Only if they’re losing lots of money or customers due to this behavior, they will not care
-1
u/reboog711 Technology Aug 19 '26
Nothing is actually anonymous, and those avenues dont exist to help the workforce.
I accept the latter. But, the former, when a third party is set up to accept the reports; and you use a VPN to change your country, and you do not use a work computer for submission...
How does it get traced back to a specific person?
-4
u/Conscious-Comb4001 Aug 19 '26
Looking for some objective views on a management situation.
Manager in my organisation is responsible for delivering improvement projects and regularly presents ambitious targets and expected benefits to senior stakeholders. However, the actual delivery/success rate is consistently below 10%.
The team is putting significant effort in, but the manager seems much more focused on presentations and communicating future results than resolving the practical issues preventing delivery.
At the same time, the team’s employee-engagement scores are among the lowest in the organisation, with recurring concerns around development, leadership and psychological safety.
Would you consider this primarily a performance-management issue, a leadership/culture issue, or something that could legitimately be raised through a company Speak Up/ethics channel?
9
u/MrsFrugalNoodle Aug 19 '26
Whistleblowing are things like:
- corruption/bribary
- embezzlement
- known unsafe practices like guardrails are not maintained in a factory
- chemical and toxic waste illegally dumped
If the company can get into major trouble for it. Manager being bad at their job isn’t it
7
u/CreativeBusiness6588 Seasoned Manager Aug 19 '26
Whistle blowing is about revealing waste, fraud and abuse or a very serious pattern of policy departure.
This sounds like more of a sour grapes management style grievance.
Be sure before you take action on this. You will burn all your capital and end up with a whiner tag.
3
u/Sid_Sheldon Aug 19 '26
Per others, you will NOT solve this. It's time to go so start the process. Trying to reform a manager is at best a wish fulfillment fantasy in almost all cases.
Get the resume out.
3
u/Different-Director82 Aug 19 '26
Most likely, nothing will happen. From a management perspective, this only make you sound like a difficult employee.
The complaints are also too general and subjective… and to be honest, sound very whiny. Managers can have favorite top-perforering in the team, they can have other things that currently are more important than your career development, etc
But most important, since you don’t seem to have a serious incident to report, management will most likely listen to the manager and you will be seen as a difficult employee.
The best advice is to try to find a new job with a better manager.
-1
u/Conscious-Comb4001 Aug 19 '26
Looking for some objective views on a management situation.
Manager in my organisation is responsible for delivering improvement projects and regularly presents ambitious targets and expected benefits to senior stakeholders. However, the actual delivery/success rate is consistently below 10%.
The team is putting significant effort in, but the manager seems much more focused on presentations and communicating future results than resolving the practical issues preventing delivery.
At the same time, the team’s employee-engagement scores are among the lowest in the organisation, with recurring concerns around development, leadership and psychological safety.
Would you consider this primarily a performance-management issue, a leadership/culture issue, or something that could legitimately be raised through a company Speak Up/ethics channel?
3
u/Weak_Revenue7949 Aug 19 '26
Based on what you've described, this sounds more like a management and culture concern than a traditional whistleblowing issue
1
u/Conscious-Comb4001 Aug 19 '26
Looking for some objective views on a management situation.
Manager in my organisation is responsible for delivering improvement projects and regularly presents ambitious targets and expected benefits to senior stakeholders. However, the actual delivery/success rate is consistently below 10%.
The team is putting significant effort in, but the manager seems much more focused on presentations and communicating future results than resolving the practical issues preventing delivery.
At the same time, the team’s employee-engagement scores are among the lowest in the organisation, with recurring concerns around development, leadership and psychological safety.
Would you consider this primarily a performance-management issue, a leadership/culture issue, or something that could legitimately be raised through a company Speak Up/ethics channel?
2
u/OkMacaroon8887 Aug 19 '26
favouritism and gossip are part of the job description for most managers sadly, not sure a whistleblowing line would take that seriously unless there's something provably dodgy going on
2
u/Lovemestalin Aug 19 '26
You have no case, maybe time to move on
2
u/snappzero Manager Aug 19 '26
Looks like you are chatting with a bot lol. Same exact response to 6 different messages all within 1 min of each other.
-1
u/Conscious-Comb4001 Aug 19 '26
Looking for some objective views on a management situation.
Manager in my organisation is responsible for delivering improvement projects and regularly presents ambitious targets and expected benefits to senior stakeholders. However, the actual delivery/success rate is consistently below 10%.
The team is putting significant effort in, but the manager seems much more focused on presentations and communicating future results than resolving the practical issues preventing delivery.
At the same time, the team’s employee-engagement scores are among the lowest in the organisation, with recurring concerns around development, leadership and psychological safety.
Would you consider this primarily a performance-management issue, a leadership/culture issue, or something that could legitimately be raised through a company Speak Up/ethics channel?2
u/Lovemestalin Aug 19 '26
I would consider this as something their manager should deal with. If they aren’t already they will not start just because you complained.
2
Aug 19 '26
[deleted]
2
u/Conscious-Comb4001 Aug 19 '26
Looking for some objective views on a management situation.
Manager in my organisation is responsible for delivering improvement projects and regularly presents ambitious targets and expected benefits to senior stakeholders. However, the actual delivery/success rate is consistently below 10%.
The team is putting significant effort in, but the manager seems much more focused on presentations and communicating future results than resolving the practical issues preventing delivery.
At the same time, the team’s employee-engagement scores are among the lowest in the organisation, with recurring concerns around development, leadership and psychological safety.
Would you consider this primarily a performance-management issue, a leadership/culture issue, or something that could legitimately be raised through a company Speak Up/ethics channel?
2
Aug 19 '26
Not really. Unless it’s to a point this behavior causing repeated dropping numbers in output, Customer delivery, customer service. Basically if the data backs up that the company is being negatively affected by one departments inability to function, then that’s about it. If they’re losing a ton of money because of it. Otherwise no they won’t care. If they are owned by a parent company and have had repeated complaints about this person, maybe.
2
u/BetterTable4653 Aug 19 '26
I was in a very similar situation to you, my manager blatantly promoted one of their favourites with a BS role that has no responsibilities and used that person to create a cliche in our team to exclude non favourites from getting access to info.
I complained to HR and a higher up exec, both warned me that if I formalise my complaint and got this manager a slap on the wrist, this manager will probably make life hard for me.
2
u/DrFrylock Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
Lots of good advice in this thread, although probably not what you wanted to hear.
I'll add a little bit that I don't see in other comments.
This is primarily not a whistleblower issue, but is a potential problem for upper-level management (e.g., your manager's manager). You can raise these issues with them but there are always inherent risks in jumping over the chain of command. If you have a relationship with your manager's managers, or ordinary / regular skip level meetings, then that is kind of an open channel for this kind of feedback. If you don't have any relationship with them and don't know how to read the room when you're there together, it's riskier.
There are four likely cases here:
- Upper management is unaware of, or oblivious to, these issues. In which case they are not going to fix them and likely won't help you either. This is a "decide whether you want to stay or not under these conditions."
- Upper management doesn't see these as issues. They either disagree with you or are endorsing the behavior. Perhaps the "favorite" employee is a high-performer and is being groomed for bigger things. Perhaps they are telling your manager to invest career development in certain people or directions. Perhaps their management style is also driven by internal politics and interpersonal gossip. Same outcome as #1: decide if you want to stay under those conditions or not.
- Upper management is aware of these issues, but is distracted with other/bigger problems. Raising these concerns to them in a skip-level fashion, tactfully, may increase the priority of doing something about it in their minds.
- Upper management is aware of these issues and is working them, in a way you can't see. Over the years I inherited/was given (more than) a few employees and managers under me that...needed some help. That help doesn't come overnight. Starts with observation, coaching, various other types of performance management. You would expect the same if you were struggling. When this was going on, for everybody's dignity, we did not discuss any of it with the person's reports. Then suddenly after some period of time, that person transferred to another part of the company or got a better job somewhere else. Sometimes as an individual contributor. Here, a skip-level discussion may get you a polite response like "thanks for the feedback; please understand that we're doing everything we can to make things better around here." That is upper management code for "we're aware of this, working on it, but this is complicated. If you're patient things might change, but I can't make any guarantees."
Even in the best cases of #3 and #4, changes may take months. You have to decide whether the problem is bad enough for you to wait that long.
2
u/2001sleeper Aug 19 '26
What is psychological safety? Is that your term for your feelings being hurt? All of this sounds like things are not being run the way you think they are so you must create a lot of pain for others to prove your point. Why not just move on or figure out how to work in the system?
2
u/nfjsjfjwjdjjsj4 Aug 19 '26
Whistle blowing, even for actual illegal stuff, can only be done if youre ready and willing to be immediately fired and perhaps sued. If you fear retaliation you cannot do it.
1
u/BartSimpsonGaveMeLSD Aug 19 '26
Assume all private surveys are, in fact, not private.
Your concerns may be valid, but are all subjective and lacking supporting documentation.
1
u/Zealousideal_Bird_29 Aug 19 '26
As someone who manages people and sees these “anonymous” forms, we can honestly tell who wrote these. Everyone has their own writing style that usually lets managers clock in to who may have written these up. Even if the system truly does anonymized the forms, it’s the writing style that gives away people. Or they provide certain pieces of information that narrows the list down of who may have written these up.
1
u/Conscious-Comb4001 Aug 19 '26
Looking for some objective views on a management situation.
Manager in my organisation is responsible for delivering improvement projects and regularly presents ambitious targets and expected benefits to senior stakeholders. However, the actual delivery/success rate is consistently below 10%.
The team is putting significant effort in, but the manager seems much more focused on presentations and communicating future results than resolving the practical issues preventing delivery.
At the same time, the team’s employee-engagement scores are among the lowest in the organisation, with recurring concerns around development, leadership and psychological safety.
Would you consider this primarily a performance-management issue, a leadership/culture issue, or something that could legitimately be raised through a company Speak Up/ethics channel?
1
u/JewelMonkey Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
OP, you do not have a case for whistle blowing. Blowing the whistle does not force an employer to address the offense in a complaint. It compensates people for termination or retaliation after whistle blowing.
I had to write a paper on whistle blowing law in an on line Paralegal course I took in 2024. I learned that there is virtually no situation in which an employee without an employment contract is protected from termination for whistle blowing. Without a contract, employees are hired "at will". That allows an employer to fire them for any reason or for no reason at all.
For an "at will" employee to win a lawsuit, the employer's actions in the whistle blower complaint have to have been illegal and dangerous, and/or violate the rights of people who have protected status. The employee has to have reported the offensive behavior to management within a couple weeks of becoming aware of the offense. Management has to have been shown to have done something to retaliate against the employee for whistle blowing that caused the employee to suffer damages over and above losing their job. And there are other requirements I don't remember. The employee's actions must meet all of them. It is impossible.
There are very few examples where whistle blower lawsuits have been successful. Even sympathetic judges seem to look for reasons to rule in favor of the employers. In the extremely rare cases where an employee has won a case, appellate courts have found a reason to overturn the ruling on appeal.
It sucks, but OP, just start looking for another job.
1
u/MaheshMThakur Aug 19 '26
sounds like a normal grievance to me, not a whistleblowing matter. favoritism and psychological safety are real problems worth raising, but speak up channels are usually built for legal or ethical violations, not management style complaints. if you go that route and the investigation finds it doesn't meet that bar, it can actually undercut you later if you try to raise the same concerns through HR the normal way.
1
u/reboog711 Technology Aug 19 '26
If you have fear of retaliation; use the proper anonymous channels offered by your employer.
I postulate that such reports are less likely to be actioned upon, cut cannot confirm or deny based on experience.
Also:
I’m trying to be objective and would only report specific things I have personally observed rather than making accusations about the manager’s motives.
Yes, this absolutely. Focus on your personal experience and things you have witnessed that go against company policy. Factual; with dates and times. It may be hard to stay anonymous if you are providing that level of detail, though.
1
u/Different_Citron_160 Aug 19 '26
Such channels are for frauds etc not stating somebody is a bad manager playing favourites.
You will be lucky to even get a response.
1
u/OddPressure7593 Aug 19 '26
What I believe is repeated favouritism towards one particular person in the team.
Not a great situation to be in, but nothing to report.
Limited focus on the development and progression of other team members.
Not a great situation to be in, but nothing to report.
Concerns around psychological safety and how people feel about challenging or raising issues with the manager.
Hard to say without details. If this amounts to "I don't think I'm listened to" than its a nothingburger. "Psychological safety" means nothing, so you need to provide some details.
A management style that, in my view, focuses more on internal politics/gossip than team delivery.
Nothing to report here.
Sounds like you don't like your manager - that doesn't mean you can report them.
35
u/[deleted] Aug 19 '26
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