There can be, although this is not supposed to happen. I called in a complaint about the HR Manager only to find out that my complaint was directed...wait for it.... to my HR Manager per the questions they ask when you call. One of their reports did the investigation, which was promptly dismissed. The HR Manager was promoted soon after and I got a couple of lectures and lost a significant amount of money as a result. Remember, HR is full of butt-kissing people with no morals. Chevron HR is known as the worst in the industry.
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2jcj,... I "think" I see your point. A host of other issues, emotions, personal biases, plain old dislikes and belief systems can, and do, get in the way of inter-personal trust, which is why it's so difficult to obtain, much less, maintain. I always thought of something Vince Lombardi once said,... "First, they gotta know ya LOVE 'em". Pretty simple. Extraordinarily difficult for many to accomplish, and be sincere. That's why, in my opinion, being a "leader" is so much more than being just a "manager" or "supervisor", but remains the essence of a sound, thriving organization, IF it's goals include "risk taking", "challenging the conventional corporate wisdom", "thinking outside the box", etc. I have actually experienced several instances, in my Chevron career, where I felt safe enough to engage in such heresy, and in each case, the "leader" was "old school" (ie., hard as nails, direct, gave clearly defined goals, their only "soft" skill appeared to be the exhibition of delight, when those goals were achieved), it wasn't "magic", except to the extent that they made us (me, anyway) want to continue to impress them with my work product. Unfortunately, my last Chevron "leader" was deceptive, unreadable, manipulative, and cared about one thing, more than all else,... himself. I saw too many, unfortunately, within the Chevron organization, like the last one.
I share your point of view @2jcj. But then again, there is the company politics.
Responses are around human nature and how is interpreted, and how "making me look bad" is defined by each individual. Then there is the quick justification of this is business not personal. When managers who have failed on more than one project, there should be a point when executives should question how much of the scapegoating is real and how much of it is to cover one's behind. I do not agree with the emphasis on trust ... trust is earned each and every day through every single action. When a manager consistently betrays the trust of others then there should be no trust. The issue with the process is that once the issue(s) is(are) reported, apparently only the individual and the supervisor is notified. If this particular individual has the boss in his/her back pocket or the supervisor's pride does not allow to admit that a bad decision was made, that is where the process fails. All of those who say don't take it personal, take it very personal ... Once reported, there is a process to validate that the issue reported has been addressed and resolved ...
Well said, 2eng.
Trust. The one thing that defines the ultimate success, or failure, of ANY relationship. It is at the core of every person's "needs" hierarchy, and it is the one thing that most organizations fail at, most miserably. Every one of these posts speaks to a total lack of trust in Chevron. Deservedly so.
I reported the abuses that several colleagues on my team had to take from our supervisor for 3 years. I made the call on a Friday from the desk of another team mate I didn't care much for. He was on his 9/80 day off, so I posed as him as I made the complaint about our bad supervisor. Several weeks went by and suddenly the team mate I had little liking for disappeared. His name soon after was not even found in the company's whitepage listing. Go figure, he was let go just like that. Moral of the story... Be careful when using that 1-800 number to diss your superiors at Chevron. There can be retaliation.
You should think very carefully about your supervisor's personality and how he/she will interpret this type of attention. Technically, there is not supposed to be any retaliation but the reality is the so0-called retaliation come sometime in the future. If you feel there is a chance that this individual is not going to take it well, submit an anonymous reporting to the alert line via mail. I happen to have an assignment manager who is a bully and brags about how she can make everyone believe she is on their side and laughs about good she is at fooling others. She knows how to play people against each other and management is not seeing it; or do they see it and prefer to not touch this situation with a ten-foot pole.
-old- Your story is very similar to one I experienced. There is a protected, obese, female bully who hired and promoted relatives and drove off good employees, while putting in three-day weeks, "working from home." Her father was rumored to be with Gulf generations ago. That seems to be the root cause of the powerful influence of the "Friends and Family Mafia" at Chevron.
Should you report these illegal and unethical breaches to the 800 number? If not now, when?
It depends on the nature of the harassment. The 800 number is essentially there to protect Chevron against activities that could result in financial losses, legal action against the company, or issues that could result in serious harm to Chevron's reputation. If you are being harassed on the basis of gender, religion, or a handicap, if you are being sexually harassed, then you will probably get good results from calling the hotline. If it's outside those bounds and your supervisor is just a jerk or the two of you have bad chemistry then the hotline probably cannot help.
The ombuds program may be another option for you. I have personal experience working with the ombuds and know two other people who have done so. In my case I called to talk about a manager who had distributed an e-mail which contained a racial slur. He also tended to be careless about language around gender. He was a decent guy, just a little careless and maybe a bit backward about those kinds of issues. The ombudsman pursued the issue and later let me know that the gentleman had a coaching session with HR and had been very embarrassed and sincerely regretful. I felt satisfied and there were no repercussions.
In one of my colleague's cases she felt she had been treated unfairly. The ombudsman told her that frankly, she had been and explained what options were available for remedy, and the likely outcomes. The reality was that almost anything she would do to pursue remedy would suck worse than the original problem so she decided to leave it alone but she felt better for having talked it out with somebody. The ombudsman was very approachable, practical, and did not pressure my colleague one way or the other. The entire process was completely confidential and the ombudsman was very clear about taking no action or communicating with anybody without the full knowledge and consent of my colleague.
If a call or online complaint is made. Depending on complaint, usually is an investigation. There should not be any retaliation and in fact this is coached /talked about.
I used it, because my supervisor was inept, lazy, and deceptive. She AVERAGED 3 days/month, simply did not come to work. Without fail, she came in late and left early, or "worked from home" the time she WAS "at work". Her greatest attribute was sloughing off HER work on a colleague and myself, while our Manager continued to want "more" from "his team". We HAD no "team". As the work environment became more toxic, supervisor became more blatantly aggressive, actually resorted to methods only a female would think of (a cackling laugh, sneezing fits that carried through the entire floor, standing behind us, silently,... just very, very, odd), we could only presume, so she could "be in our face" as if to say "I'm HERE, and you can't STOP me". It was seriously weird and the entire 3rd floor of the building was aware of what was going on (with the exception of several of her "close friends", everyone else hated her). Repeated discussions with both the Manager and HR resulted in myself and another being fired, as our supervisor resorted to the "hostile work environment" complaint, first. That my colleague and I were in our mid-60's, probably just afforded a convenient means of getting rid of us, and avoiding the legal action that the supervisor (who was/is certifiably crazy, in MY estimation) would bring (she was a breast cancer survivor, which automatically placed her in the "disabled" category,... and she really milked it,... sorry for that unfortunate metaphor). The only reason we could ever come up with, for Chevron to hang onto her was that her father had been a manager with Gulf. Seems hard to buy, I know, the company held onto a slug that wastes more of OTHER people's time than she even managed to, her own. But,... I'd lay odds, she's still there. BTW,... my colleague and I both retired and have found that each of our lives are much the richer for it. We see one another, for lunch, fairly often, and it's almost with pity that we think of those who remain in the environment we were cast out of. Sometimes, Life throws one a curve, but that doesn't mean it can't still be hit out of the park.
rrf has it right at Chevron. Put up with it or feel the wrath.
No, because I want to keep my job.
I know some one in last year who was a future leader supervisor, had a complain against from multiple people for being a bully/rude. There were multiple complains followed by 2-3 months of investigation and supervision was demoted to individual contributor role and was taken off from future leader list. The guy was supper Amat but had behavioral issues at least in this case system worked.
I knew of 3 people who called to complain about a colleague who verbally abused and harassed others. The calls were coordinated / made about the same time as they couldn't take it any longer. They spoke to supervisors / managers, and nothing happened. A month or two months after the complaints, the colleague was promoted to be their direct supervisor. This was about 3 or 4 years ago. I have lost faith in Chevron since.
I used it for a complaint on a person who have never work a Friday from the office in 10 years of working at chevron.
Nothing happened ....... Although it was in Louisiana and it was $120 barrel oil. So they probable knew someone and no one cared back then.