Boss denies 'culture of fear' | There's no point in asking staff their opinion if you're not going to listen

An international HR story recently made headlines when Mayor of the Canadian town Windsor denied having a ‘culture of fear’ despite employee feedback data suggesting otherwise.

The council carried out an employee experience survey with PwC and found that staff were “concerned with speaking up and expressing thoughts freely” and wanted leaders to provide a safe environment “to share diverse perspectives”.

However, when asked by reporters about the survey results, the Canadian Mayor denied employees “coming to work fearful”, saying that “at the end of the day, (the city council) don’t have a culture of fear.”

It’s unusual to see such a blatant disregard of employee experience data. And so, it highlights, in a rather extreme way, the need for employers to not only do EX surveys and investigations to tick a box, but to respond effectively to what their staff are telling them. The consequences of this could be catastrophic for a company.