On a chilly Wednesday morning in a central London conference centre last month, Tony Danker, head of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), told business leaders that they must embrace progressive values to remain competitive.
The former Guardian Media Group executive urged those assembled at 8 Northumberland Avenue – a stone’s throw from the halls of power in Westminster – to adopt “active diversity and inclusion strategies” if they want to attract young talent.
The CBI’s “Future of Work” conference was loaded with high-profile speakers from business and politics, including education secretary Gillian Keegan, Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner and Ian Muldowney, operating chief at BAE Systems.
Danker said: “More than ever, it is a competition about values: the values a company holds and the values of work it promotes. Much of this is driven by the different generations now in the workforce, and their expectations of how business should contribute to their own lives and wider society.”
Five weeks later, Danker’s paean to progressive values now threatens to expose a thread of hypocrisy running through the CBI, a group that styles itself as Britain’s premier lobby group for big business.
In that time, Danker has stepped aside amid an investigation into claims he harassed a female colleague; while ministers and the Governor of the Bank of England have paused engagement with the CBI following separate allegations against other colleagues of serious sexual misconduct and widespread inappropriate behaviour.
With some members reviewing their association with the CBI, the lobby group is facing an existential crisis as it awaits the verdict of an independent investigation being conducted by City law firm Fox Williams. It begs a simple question: can the CBI survive?
The most serious claim, which was first reported by the Guardian, was an allegation by a female employee that she was raped by a senior colleague at the CBI’s 2019 summer boat party.
She reported the incident to a manager but said she felt “let down” when bosses urged her to seek counselling rather than take further action. She subsequently did not report the incident to the police.
The CBI said it found no evidence or record of the alleged rape, allthough it has asked Fox Williams to include the claims in its investigation.
At the same boat party, a different manager was accused of attempted sexual assault, which the CBI did investigate. The alleged perpetrator in question left the organisation. The CBI last week declined to say whether it had referred the matter to the police.
One former female employee told The Telegraph that the boat party was “notorious” and she was aware of a colleague being sexually harassed on the dancefloor at the event. She adds that the organisation had a blokish, public schoolboy culture.
The investigation by Fox Williams has been expanded to examine the new allegations made last week, with complainants also describing a “toxic culture” of “unchecked misogyny” at the organisation.
The former female employee says she had direct experience of this culture and suffered at the hands of a “rather toxic” male colleague who was popular internally and who repeatedly made offensive comments towards her. She says: “At lunchtime one day he said to me: ‘Everyone should be bullied once in their lifetime.’”
The campaign of harassment took its toll. “I felt unsafe, vigilant of the next ambush and helpless,” she says.
“There was nothing concrete to report to the HR and therefore not much protection from his aggression. I know this is nothing in comparison to being raped but it did have a negative impact on me, my ability to perform well at the CBI and my career over all.
“This unwanted attention also played a deciding role in me ending my work contract early and being reluctant to go back to the corporate world.”
The CBI said last week that its board expects to have preliminary findings and recommended actionsn from the first phase of the Fox Williams investigation “soon after Easter”.
Before the investigation was extended to include the new allegations against other other colleagues, the law firm was initially brought in to examine alleged impropriety by Danker.
That complaint involves a female employee who claims Danker sent her unsolicited messages over a period of more than a year, as well as making unwanted verbal remarks. He is also alleged to have been viewing employees’ personal Instagram profiles.
The ex-employee who spoke to The Telegraph says she had little one-to-one interaction with Danker, who joined the CBI at the end of 2020, but that he always came across as “friendly, energetic and jokey”.
Another former female employee says she had first-hand experience of Danker messaging her out of the blue.
She says: “After a meeting soon after he joined, he messaged me directly on Teams chat, being very friendly and doing director outreach, which I thought was nice and something you don’t often see at big organisations like the CBI.”
When the allegations first surfaced, Danker apologised for causing “offence or anxiety to any colleague”, saying it was “completely unintentional”.
Yet for an organisation that relies on companies paying it a fee to lobby politicians and regulators on their behalf, the scandal threatens to derail the CBI’s business model and raises questions about the future of private sector engagement with ministers. The body took in £22.2m from membership fees in 2021, nearly 90pc of its total revenue.
The engineering company Rolls-Royce, EY and Marks & Spencer all made public statements raising concerns about the allegations last week, saying they have expressed their views directly with the CBI.
Many executives say privately that they will await for Fox Williams to deliver its findings before deciding on what action to take.
The chief executive of a London-based financial services company says: “We are perplexed by the level of accusations and will await the outcome of the enquiry before considering further actions.”
Meanwhile an insider at a FTSE 100 insurer that has worked closely with the CBI says: “We are following the investigation closely and any decision we make will be based on the outcome. We have also raised our concerns with the CBI directly.”
One of the former employees adds: “There will be reputational damage. I have never seen the Government take such drastic action so quickly.”
This is not the first time members have looked to quit the body. In the wake of the Brexit vote, the CBI was criticised by Brexiteers for becoming overly identified with the Remain cause, leading to high-profile departures including Lord Bamford’s JCB, which paid £30,000 a year in fees.
With the Government currently refusing to engage with the organisation, its promise to members that it will “proactively speak to government about issues and opportunities, ensuring firms of all kinds get to use their voice” is clearly impossible to achieve.
In its latest annual report, the CBI cites a number of risks to the viability of the organisation. One of those risks is: “[A] lack of diversity [that] damages the CBI brand and limits development.”
The CBI will certainly have a fight on its hands to repair its brand once Fox Williams publishes its findings.
A CBI spokesman said: “It’s deeply regrettable and completely unacceptable that any staff member would feel poorly treated or unsafe. The CBI has treated and continues to treat all matters of workplace conduct with the utmost seriousness. We would encourage those who wish to raise matters of this nature to report them to the independent investigation.”
Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sex-abuse-scandal-rocked-progressive-090000006.html