The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Office of Inspector General has issued its report, Special Inquiry of the FDIC’s Workplace Culture with Respect to Harassment and Related Misconduct – Part 1.
An Agency’s overall performance and reputation can be undermined by employee perceptions that an Agency’s workplace culture does not demonstrate commitment to its core values. This can lead to long-term challenges in achieving the Agency’s mission and retaining talent. In addition, if management does not hold personnel accountable and foster a safe environment where employees can report harassment and related misconduct without fear of retaliation, employees will mistrust the Agency’s efforts.
We found that a majority of FDIC employees who responded to a workplace culture survey stated they felt safe, valued, and respected and had generally positive views about their coworkers and immediate managers. However, employee views of FDIC management and leadership with respect to harassment and related misconduct were less favorable. More than one-third of respondents reported that they had either experienced or personally witnessed harassment. Additionally, our review of cases and settlement agreements supported some of the employee perceptions, specifically that some FDIC managers had not protected victims of harassment and retaliated against those who filed a complaint. These conditions occurred because FDIC leadership does not consistently implement the Agency’s policies and stated core values, specifically, fairness, accountability, and integrity.
The FDIC did not consistently maintain documentation related to disciplinary actions resulting from complaints of harassment and related misconduct. Additionally, the FDIC did not document its decision-making process for these disciplinary actions. This occurred because the FDIC did not have a centralized system to track all harassment and related misconduct complaints and the associated records, efforts, and actions from inception to resolution. Also, the FDIC does not have clear policy, standards, and procedures for documenting the process that it followed to make disciplinary decisions.
FDIC executives have varying levels of knowledge regarding harassment and related misconduct complaints across the FDIC. Also, FDIC policies do not require allegations of harassment or related misconduct involving FDIC employees to be reported to the appropriate FDIC stakeholders.
Our investigative work on specific allegations and complaints of harassment and related misconduct against several senior FDIC officials remains ongoing.
We made six recommendations regarding the FDIC’s efforts to improve its workplace culture by setting a tone at the top where all FDIC executives model the FDIC’s core ethical values; including a mechanism to provide support and protection for employees who fear or experience retaliation; establishing an agreement with a third party to conduct investigations of complaints against senior FDIC officials; developing a process to periodically report complaints of harassment and related misconduct to appropriate FDIC stakeholders; restating FDIC employees’ obligation to report allegations of misconduct; and including the OIG Hotline as an option for reporting misconduct.
The FDIC agreed with the recommendations and will take corrective action by June 30, 2025.