On our latest MAD Leaders Podcast, Allianz Director of People Experience, Dawn Dallas, talks about why it’s so important that employers support their employees when it comes to domestic abuse.
As she says, statistics for England and Wales show that one in four women and one in six men will experience domestic abuse and the majority (51%) will not talk about it due to stigma.
“It’s a huge amount of people,” she says.” We know it’s happening in society, we know it’s happening across organisations. It’s really important that employers take action. We found a groundswell of people wanting to understand more.”
You can listen to the episode on Spotify, by clicking the link below, or find it on any platforms where you get your podcasts
As Sara Davison, The Divorce Coach, wrote in April for us, that “domestic abuse awareness is now a workplace issue HR can’t afford to ignore”. She believes that there is a “shift” happening in workplaces, and organisations are realising that domestic abuse affects workplace performance and “is becoming one of the most urgent, and least understood, risks facing organisations”.
How can employers practically help?
In the podcast Dallas talks about how, step by step, the insurance company set up a strategy that actually worked practically in the organisation. Topics covered include: psychological safety, face to face connection, engaging senior management, consistency, line manager training, mental health first aiders with specialist expertise, an online hub and the importance of communicating about the strategy.
She explains how consultation with employees with lived experience was pivotal to the process, as well as consulting specialist organisation. For instance, Employers’ Initiative on Domestic Abuse and Domestic Abuse Workplace Solutions.
Addressing stigma
She also advises how AI can be helpful in developing policy, but why human input on this sensitive issue is fundamental.
This is just the start for Allianz, as Dallas stresses the employer takes an iterative approach to policy making, reviewing it frequently to ensure it works at the coal face, not just on the shelf. In future she plans to keep addressing stigma as well as adding financial abuse support to the employer’s offering.
“Before this, we didn’t have a consistent approach. We were just trusting, and expecting the line managers, to do the right thing. But we weren’t supporting them in terms of what that looked like and we didn’t have a process that sat behind it. Now we do.”
Time stamp of the conversation:
00:00 Welcome to Leaders Podcast
00:35 The Workplace Challenge
01:37 Why Allianz Acted
02:34 The Support Gap
04:04 Lived Experience First
05:19 Building the Policy
08:09 Resources and Hub
09:10 Iterating the Strategy
10:10 Launching the Campaign
13:40 Challenges and Buy In
15:36 Employee Response
17:02 AI and Policy Writing
19:57 Top Tips to Start
21:36 Breaking Shame and Stigma
22:43 The Alien Question
25:13 Closing and Subscribe
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