Is it true the regulators are reviewing all complaints sent thru the ethics line? Thought I read that somewhere. What’s the process behind the scenes?
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Ethics line data is a mess...don't expect much.
ER and Ethics hotlines are useless and at Wells Fargo you will be blacklisted. You are better off hiring an attorney and have them write a strong letter with your demand and send it to the offender and two management layers above the offender. If you don’t want/can’t afford an attorney, the second best option is to write an anonymous email to the CEO and the Board with specifics. There are websites that offer anonymous email services. It will land on their inbox and it becomes discoverable in a lawsuit. They will be motivated to act. I have used both options in different situations with great success.
@1hum - your example shows exactly why HR is in place at WF. It's not for the employee, it's to protect WF from lawsuits. WF uses HR they same way they use Risk and Compliance - as a shield, not as advisory.
In the example below, you do not call HR.
You call a lawyer. Then Legal will deal with the harasser and HR. Comments are one thing, contact is another.
The Ethics Line will always refer HR issues back to ER or HR. You are almost always going to be better off calling a lawyer, a strongly worded cease and desist can get the job done.
ER however can be very effective when management wants to do something to employees at large that is unethical or illegal. Most every other situation is a he said, she said.
We had a guy in our department who kept touching women, making inappropriate comments, staring and making comments about women’s chests and bums, etc. These were not barely over the line incidents. Or overly sensitive women. He was blatantly disrespectful and unprofessional. The women in our department repeatedly complained to our manager about him for years. Our manager would say he was reporting it to HR but HR would say we didn’t have enough to fire him. I was in the manager’s office with one of our younger female employees once when he called HR. HR said it was his word vs hers. They had to protect him as much as they had to protect her. They told our manager to keep building a file on him.
It ended with the offender physically attacking a woman at her desk in front of several people. Our HR rep STILL said it wasn’t enough to fire him because witnesses hadn’t seen the entire sequence of events. Management’s response was that they would “have a talk with him.” The assaulted woman was crying and HR advised our manager to have her call Employee Assistance Consulting if she was still upset when she got home. She did call EAC that evening and thankfully the counselor at EAC reported the assault to someone. The Head of Security came in the next morning, I don’t know all that was said, but they ended up firing him and walking him out.
We could have had a bad HR rep, but my experience with HR has been that they took the Human out of Human Resources many moons ago. It’s just another ineffective overly-complicated understaffed mismanaged department at Wells Fargo.
I filed a complaint on the Ethics line for comments made by a "leader" on an All Hands call that was reordered. It was not me being a butthurt Bob it was heard by all and everyone from my leadership to the people on my team as horrific.
Two MONTHS went by before anyone got back to me. And they asked me a bunch of nonsense questions about my feelings. I responded with 'did you listen to the call? They replied it took them so long to review my issue that the recording was no longer available.
I remarked I wanted to file an ethics complaint on the Ethics line. I was livid. Not for MY issue but what if a person was in a really dangerous situation? It is appalling that they feel it is okay to wait months to respond.
Either everyone is a b*tching Betty or they are as incompetent and the program has no teeth. Very sad
I believe this is what OP is referring to:
Banking Regulator Rebukes Wells Fargo's HR Operations - WSJ
Dec 4, 2019 · The OCC also called out the bank's backlog of 3,000 employee complaints, the people said. These likely include complaints from employees who say they were wrongfully terminated, which HR staffers are supposed to investigate, one of the people said.
That line is useless. I reported a threat made to me by my manager with witnesses. In fact we all reported it. Nothing was done. Manager was protected and I was made to look like the problem and my only option was to apply for other jobs within or leave. Horrible experience.
I would be surprised if any complaints are actually reviewed with serious intentions.
Thought I read that somewhere
ER sounds exactly like HR. Talk about useless groups. I had an employee come after me screaming at me calling me a _itch. Yes, a crazy old-timer that is still at WF with a bum thumb that has kept her out on leave for over 470 days. And speaking of useless...
I reported the incident to HR and they did absolutely nothing. In fact, with the help of her long-time friends as her first-line and second-line managers, they turned it around and made it look like I was the problem. I guess maybe if she had a knife, HR may have reprimanded her. If the issue is not going to hit the news, then don't bother reporting anything. It is not going to go anywhere and like me, you will be blacklisted.
Ethics line submissions are reviewed and researched by a separate group of Employee Relations folks who them pass it off after their research for further "processing." If it's run of the mill and documented "my boss is a toxic boss" then do not even think it's going to go anywhere. Because it will not. If it's documented retaliation or other it may go somewhere.
The ER folks I've dealt with are utterly useless id–ts.
I've submitted more than a couple of fully documented ER complaints against my boss, a member of the decade club, only to have ER tell me to discuss it with my boss or that my boss's boss supports their leadership/management.
If ER does not do anything with my recent submission, I fully plan to go direct to the OCC regulator overseeing Wells Fargo in the hopes that the OCC adds my stuff to the existing MRA rebuking Well's HR business practices.
Management needs to be 100% transparent with the Status of MRA and MRIAs. They need each and every project to remediate shared with everyone and the current status and resources to complete. This whole need to know basis is bogus, expose everything.