Employee FAQs

What is Report and Support? 

Report and Support is provided to us by a company called Culture Shift. As an employee you can use it as an additional channel for reporting bullying, harassment, or discrimination. It replaces our microaggressions reporting form but all our other procedures and policies remain unchanged. You can either make a named report, which means you will be identifiable and will receive a follow up, or an anonymous report, where you receive no follow up contact. 

You have multiple ways in which you can report and challenge bullying, harassment and discrimination behaviours that have happened to you and you have witnessed. Our Bullying, Harassment & Discrimination Policy gives more detail on how you can do this and what the next steps are for all involved. 

 
Why have Teach First introduced this?

While we encourage all employees to speak to their line managers or a member of the People Business Partnering team, we understand that not everyone will want, or feel able to do this. Some people may feel awkward speaking about the incident or worry that it was not ‘serious enough’ for a formal report, or others may be concerned about the consequences. Report and Support enables you to tell us about bullying, harassment and discrimination easily and quickly providing a further way to report incidents. Ultimately, we encourage you to report the incident that happened to you or you witnessed in the way that is most comfortable for you.

What happens when someone makes an anonymous report? 

If you choose to make an anonymous report, you’ll be asked several specific questions about the incident you’re reporting. After you complete the form, you will not receive any further follow up. Our People Business Partnering team will assess whether action is needed, but they will not be able to follow up with you individually on it or ask you for any further information which may enable action. 

The team will also use the Report and Support tool to monitor whether there are any patterns in reports from areas of the charity. This will form part of the conversations our People Business Partnering team has with leaders across the charity. 
 
Even though we can’t follow up individually on anonymous reports or have enough information to take further specific action, there’s a great deal of value to us in having the data. Having an anonymous reporting option can help some people to feel more confident in reporting what has happened to them. Anonymous reports help us to have a more complete picture of what is happening to our employees and tracking the data will allow us to identify bigger trends and respond to them on an organisational level. 

To be clear: if you submit an anonymous report, you will be asked specific questions about the incident but not receive any further follow up and we may be limited in action we can take.

What happens when someone makes a named report?  

 
If you submit a named report, we’ll ask you to complete several specific questions about the incident you’re reporting. We’ll assign a member of our People Business Partnering team to your case, who will follow up with you individually.  
 

Depending on the nature of the incident, the actions taken will vary. And the Business Partnering Team will discuss with you what your desired outcome is. Further steps may include: 

Please see our Bullying, Harassment & Discrimination Policy for more information on next steps once a report is made. 

Once necessary steps have been taken and any formal processes concluded - where appropriate - we'll close the case on our internal systems. No-one will be able to access the data further, except for data reporting reasons. Tracking the data will allow us to identify bigger trends and respond to them on an organisational level.
 
What if I just want to find support services? 

 
If you do not want to make either a named or anonymous report, you can still access support through the Report and Support site. You can access this here: Support Pages 
 

What if I don’t want to use the system, how else can I tell Teach First?  
 
You have multiple ways in which you can report and challenge bullying, harassment and discrimination behaviours that have happened to you and you have witnessed. Our Bullying, Harassment & Discrimination Policy gives more detail on how you can do this and what the next steps are for all involved, see section 5 ‘What to do if you feel you are being bullied, harassed, or discriminated against’. 
 

You can also speak to your line manager and / or contact the People Business Partnering team PeopleAdvisors@teachfirst.org.uk   

If you would prefer to remain anonymous, you must use the Report and Support reporting form.  

 

How will you keep my data safe? 

 
Full details on how we keep your information is safe is available in our Privacy Notice.  

 
To summarise, we only collect data that relates to the incident that you’ve experienced, and we’ve developed a protocol so that only designated Teach First staff members will be able to access your sensitive data.  

basis. 

 

Will my report be confidential? 

 

From the Discrimination, Bullying and Harassment Policy, (7d): “We treat complaints of bullying and harassment sensitively and maintain confidentiality to the maximum extent possible. Investigation of allegations will normally require limited disclosure on a "need to know" basis. For example, your identity and the nature of the allegations must be revealed to the person you are complaining about, so they are able to respond to the allegations. Some details may also have to be given to potential witnesses, but this will be limited as far as possible while ensuring a fair and sufficiently thorough investigation. We will emphasise the importance of confidentiality to witnesses. If, after the disciplinary proceedings have concluded, the person you have complained about remains in employment (for example, a sanction short of dismissal is appropriate), we may need to share some information with managers to prevent any risk of further harassment by that person against you or others.” 

 
There are some other circumstances where we need to tell someone else about your report.  

 
We are committed to handling your report sensitively and respectfully. However, there are exceptions where we may not be able to maintain confidentiality and we must escalate your report to other people – even if you do not consent. This happens when an incident that you have reported meets our internal threshold of being a 'serious incident', and therefore must be escalated in our Serious Incident Management process.  
 
This includes, but is not limited to, scenarios where: