Paper 2023/655

TandaPay Whistleblowing Communities: Shifting Workplace Culture Towards Zero-Tolerance Sexual Harassment Policies

Abstract

Abstract—Corporate sexual harassment policies often prioritize liability mitigation over the creation of a corporate culture free of harassment. Victims of sexual harassment are often required to report claims individually to HR. This can create an environment of self-censorship when employees feel that they cannot trust HR to act as an unbiased mediator. This problem is compounded when corporations have a culture that is tolerant of certain types of harassment. Forcing employees to report incidents to HR does nothing to address employees’ fear of bias and uncertainty. This paper presents TandaPay, a decentralized grievance reporting protocol designed to address sexual harassment. TandaPay empowers whistleblowing communities to collectively approve their own harassment claims. TandaPay reduces self-censorship by allowing employees to take ownership of the reporting process, as employees no longer need to rely on HR to act as an intermediary. The protocol employs a novel method of using financial incentives to guard against collusion. This provides corporations with a guarantee that employees can only approve valid claims. Using TandaPay, corporations can give employees greater autonomy with the goal of minimizing self-censorship. This increases the reporting of incidents, enabling workers to change the corporate culture to one of respect and accountability.

Note: The 2024 revision includes data from a simulation run on TandaPay, a review section, and two new authors who worked on the simulation section.