Why employees fear reporting workplace harassment issues

Achieving a healthy workplace requires moving beyond simple legal compliance and toward active cultural transformation and the cultivation of genuine relational trust.

On a recent episode of The HR Leader Podcast, Jerome Doraisamy spoke with EMA Consulting principal consultant Ming-Lyn Hii about her work in implementing lawful and reasonable management action plans, the importance of ensuring more constructive interactions between managers and their teams, the drivers of such negative interactions, and what constitutes reasonable conduct.

An expert in employee relations with a broad skill set spanning across workplace investigations, contracts and enterprise agreements, Hii has held over a decade of experience in the human resources space.

In the episode, Hii challenged HR professionals to look beyond the static boundaries of legal compliance, advocating for a shift toward active cultural transformation.

Framing the foundation of management action within the boundary between performance management with harm, Hii noted that leaders needed a clear vision on what lawful action looked like in practice.

"A big part of my work involves helping leaders understand the difference between lawful, reasonable management action that could cause harm or cross the line,” she explained.

Further to this, she also highlighted that effective management systems depended on prevention rather than reaction, particularly where risk of harm existed, stressing that, “compliance requires prevention.”

Hii had consistently linked constructive workplace outcomes to the quality of relationships between leaders and staff, arguing that legal compliance alone was insufficient without relational trust.

She had described the gap as: "leaders not knowing how to build real relationships."

This had extended into the importance of psychosocial safety and upward communication.

The conversation had reinforced that when employees did not feel safe to speak up, early warning systems failed, even where formal processes existed.

As such, she had referenced broader evidence showing that: "over 80% of people who'd ever experienced harassment in their life didn't make a formal report.”

This can be attributed to concerns in trust, confidentiality and an overarching sense of fear, which had underscored why constructive managerial to employee interactions were essential for surfacing issues early.

Regarding negative interactions in the workplace, one of the key drivers she had identified was a lack of relational awareness, particularly where leaders misread how their behaviour was received and pointed to: a "lack of awareness of how someone else experiences your behaviour."

When it came to systemic and behavioural contributors, including failure to intervene early and the absence of psychosocial safety, Hii noted that leaders often did not act before issues escalated.

In addition, she had referenced research showing why employees did not raise concerns, including: "fear of negative consequences, no confidence in the complaint handling process or they have concerns about confidentiality."

Hii had distinguished reasonable conduct not only through legal thresholds, but through the practical impact on others and workplace culture.

She had referred to the legal framing used in workplace investigations, and noted: "bullying is determined by whether behaviour is objectively unreasonable and creates a risk to safety.”

Within this, Hii had expressed that fairness was assessed objectively, not based on intent alone, meaning that leaders could act without intending harm yet still cause workplace risk.

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