FORMER CBI Chief Economist and former Bank of England employee Rain Newton-Smith has re-joined the business lobby organisation as the CBI’s new leader.
In a series of tweets on her first day as CBI director general, Newton-Smith expressed her commitment to “rebuild and reimagine” the body and her belief in its job.
To those women who have been let down by the business organisation, she expressed her “profoundly sorry.”
“You will have heard about the crisis that has shocked & saddened us all at the CBI,” she wrote. “I want to recognise the courage of the women who came forward & say how profoundly sorry I am for how our organisation let you down. I hope to reward your bravery by finding a better path forward.”
On Monday (24) CBI has officially admitted that it hired “culturally toxic” people and failed to sack staff who sexually harassed female colleagues.
Brian McBride, the president of the CBI, published an open letter to its 190,000 members after weeks of revelations regarding the CBI’s culture and the conduct of top personnel, which were originally exposed by the Guardian.
It says a failure to act allowed a “very small minority” of employees came to feel that they could harass or physically harm women without facing any sanction.
The troubled lobby organisation claimed to have fired several employees now.
In the letter McBride says:
“The greatest of these emotions is a collective sense of shame, for having so badly let down the enthusiastic, ambitious, and passionate people who came to work at the CBI. They rightly expected to be able to do so in a safe environment, and we failed them.
“We didn’t put in place sufficient preventative measures to protect our people from those seeking to cause harm and we didn’t react properly when issues arose as a result.
“We failed to filter out culturally toxic people during the hiring process. We failed to conduct proper cultural onboarding of staff. Our HR function was not represented at board level, which reduced escalation paths to senior levels of the company when these were most needed. And we tried to find resolution in sexual harassment cases when we should have removed those offenders from our business.”
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt stated on Monday (24) that there was “no point” interacting with the CBI when its own members have abandoned them, even though the government had already chosen to halt any interactions with the lobby organisation.
The CBI, according to McBride, had 60 days to prepare an action plan before its members could vote on it. He said that the organisation had accepted all 35 of the suggestions given by the Fox Williams investigators.
The letter says that effective immediately, it will operate a zero-tolerance approach to sexual harassment and bullying behaviour.
Also, all CBI staff and board members will receive compulsory training, covering bullying and harassment prevention, employee relations best-practice, mental health awareness and employment law.
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