It is reminiscent of an insurance policy, which the Diakonie presented. A brochure, 20 pages plus a 16-page annex: “How to deal with sexualized violence between employees.” The guide is insurance just in case. Such a case occurred in the Diakonie Munich and Upper Bavaria last year. An employee accused the spokesman of the board of directors of having overstepped the bounds in contact with her. He himself denies that, it is statement against statement. What almost made the matter a disaster for those involved and for Diakonie: There were no rules for dealing with such allegations. What to do if – whether it’s a misplaced spell or physical assault. Those responsible at the time in the evangelical social enterprise were haphazard for too long, so that in the end everyone involved was damaged, including the deaconry.
It would be foolish to react with malice because something has gone wrong in the church in the sensitive field of closeness and distance. Lack of planning is not an exclusive problem for the churches and their associations. They learned and researched in the Diakonie in order to benefit from good templates from other companies – they didn’t find anything. That doesn’t mean that there really isn’t anything like it anywhere, but one has to assume that not many institutions have taken precautions. It says a lot when HR managers from two municipalities in the Munich area contact the Diakonie boss and ask for her new guidelines. And that’s a good five years after the “Metoo” debate began, which showed that a lot can happen between colleagues, and even more so between managers and employees of any gender. Every company, every authority, every association would do well to take precautions.
A set of rules for the worst-case scenario is also a sign of appreciation for the workforce: We look out for you. We take the person reporting an incident seriously, we protect them. And at the same time, we deal fairly with the person who is accused.
Certainly, developing and living such a guide costs money, as does disability insurance. It’s also expensive, and you regularly ask yourself: I’m healthy and fit, do I need that? If you don’t need them and have supposedly spent a lot of money for nothing by the time you retire, you can consider yourself lucky. This also applies to companies if they do not need the guides and templates. Experience alone teaches that many employees and many companies need such guardrails as insurance against incapacity to act.