How do you encourage employees to speak against powerful but stinky managers?

I have had many good and bad experiences with my team members. Some issues were personal, some related to the team and some related with the company.

Sometimes I encountered situations when my soul asked me to shout but I ignored my inner voice because I was afraid of losing my job. I was afraid of not getting a timely promotion.

Today, I am not afraid of anyone because I am not working under anyone. I have no boss, and I have no intent to have any boss in future. Now I have some courage to speak up.

I know some people who are a serious threat to company culture. Employees observe their leaders and emulate their leadership. In some unfortunate events, middle-level leaders become corrupt but higher management remain clueless.

I want to share one incident from the organization where I worked for more than seven years. I witnessed my manager misusing company money, but I remained silent.

I was in the US for a work assignment. There was a requirement of 3–4 team members to handle customer issues and troubleshoot live on their systems.

Our team manager from India wanted to join the US-team. He planned to travel on H1 visa that means he would get a salary in US and had to bear all living expenses on his own. He played a trick. He arranged the travel of another team member on the business visa so that they both could share company-paid hotel and taxi.

He was saving a lot and enjoying like a company paid vacation. He rotated several people on the business visa to get that unfair advantage of his managerial role.

There was nothing wrong in sharing rooms, even as per company policies. But dumb people were travelling to the US just because they had a visa. They were not well trained to handle work that increased work pressure on fellow team members.

Everyone in the India team soon became aware that eligibility criteria for US travel was — Single Male having B1 visa. (competitive skills didn’t matter)

Image: Flickr

I regret not informing our HR or senior management about his misuse of power and influence. He could not have done all this without his position as a Manager and without his influence on his seniors who approved all those travels.

All our team members were aware of this situation, but it looked like remaining silent was the company-wide policy.

The story does not end here. He enjoyed a Vegas trip by road along with two other employees without informing the team in India. What an awesome idea of travelling the US on a company paid car and getting your salary when you are not working.

What will happen if every employee becomes an opportunist?
I want to know your views on how to find such people in an organization. How employees can get the courage to report such misuse?

Connect with me on Twitter @pardeepg