Being a good employer means creating a culture where your employees feel valued and want to help you succeed. It also means providing a safe environment for them that guarantees their mental well-being. A Confidential Advisor can play a significant role in doing this. 

What is a Confidential Advisor? 

A Confidential Advisor is someone who listens and offers advice to employees who come to them with workplace issues stemming from undesirable behaviors such as sexual harassment, verbal abuse, bullying, aggression, and discrimination. 

What benefits are there to appointing a Confidential Advisor? 

For many employees it can be difficult to talk to their colleagues about these issues, or they might be reticent about reporting them to their direct supervisor or Human Resources representatives because they are afraid that it might affect their careers negatively. A Confidential Advisor will lower the threshold for employees to open up about their issues. 

Having a Confidential Advisor on board will also work to prevent organizational consequences such as decreased employee productivity and helps mitigate employee turnover. In the case of productivity, employees who are dealing with problems such as intimidation or other types of abuse are less engaged and less productive. Whereas employees who feel safe in their work environment tend to have a higher engagement level and are more productive. Regarding the effect of having access to a Confidential Advisor on employee turnover, think about it this way. If you were being treated badly and you had the choice to leave and search for a better workplace, wouldn’t you? Employees who are dealing with undesirable behaviors and who are afraid of repercussions will choose to find other employment much sooner than talking to someone in leadership or Human Resources. Having someone impartial and confidential they can talk to can prevent these issues from escalating. 

Besides being there for employees, a Confidential Advisor is also a support for Leadership because they will be able to provide them with insight into what is going on in the organization on a people level. Having that information will help them take action to put measures in place to prevent such behaviors from happening, or to know what actions to take when it does.  

Choosing a Confidential Advisor 

If you want to appoint a Confidential Advisor, you can choose someone from within your company or you can hire an external Confidant. No matter what you choose to do, it is important that this Confidential Advisor is independent, accessible, and well trained and can guarantee confidentiality. Only then does the Confidential Advisor system work as it should. 

To know more about this topic and to find out how we can help your organization, feel free to contact U-SparkPeople Management & Development Consultancy at charlene@u-sparkpeople or via WhatsApp at (297) 592-7591.