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Shannon Corregan: Organizations struggle with apologies

The Royal Bank of Canada has been answering some tough questions in the days since it became embroiled in an outsourcing controversy.

The Royal Bank of Canada has been answering some tough questions in the days since it became embroiled in an outsourcing controversy. To be accurate, RBC hasn’t been accused of outsourcing per se, but of bringing over foreign workers, training them for their IT services contractor iGATE Corp., and then firing the employees who trained them.

I’ve been following the story, not so much to see if the claims are true (though they seem to be), but to watch RBC’s reaction to the accusations. So far, the bank’s strategy has followed the standard pattern.

At first, RBC CEO Gord Nixon denied any allegations of wrongdoing by sticking to the literal truth: “RBC has not and does not hire any temporary foreign workers.”

It was only after the tide of public opinion turned against them and Canadians began to vocalize their anger that Nixon addressed the accusations head-on and issued a statement that was more comprehensive than, “Technically, we haven’t done anything wrong.”

The second apology is a fine one, and can be viewed in full at rbc.com, but it’s too little too late for a lot of people, including many British Columbians, who were soured by Nixon’s initial failure to take his former employees’ complaints seriously.

I’m consistently amazed that people like Nixon — CEOs who have access to media consultants and advisers — so consistently screw up public apologies. It must be a knee-jerk reaction, because Nixon’s initial denial followed the standard pattern of the corporate “fauxpology” — an instance where an organization attempts to do damage control by issuing a placating statement without actually apologizing for its behaviour.

Regular people apologize all the time. We make mistakes, we’re called out on them, we stop and take stock of our behaviour, we realize that our behaviour unintentionally but seriously offended or injured someone, we apologize with humility, we learn, we move on. I wonder why organizations have such a hard time doing it.

You can always tell when an organization (or a person — let’s not just pick on companies here) doesn’t understand or want to acknowledge that they’ve done something awful, because they’ll start with: “I’m sorry if some of you were offended.”

“If” is a great little word that puts the onus on the person who was offended, rather than the actions of the person who offended them. It restructures the responsibility in the situation from the group that injured to the person attempting to call attention to that injury.

Nixon didn’t sink so far as to employ an “if,” but by initially denying that RBC did anything wrong, he brought his apology’s authenticity into question at the exact moment when he needed to re-establish his bank’s integrity.

Bad move. The public isn’t stupid. We’re well aware that apologies can be either sincere statements or cynical attempts at damage control. By failing to directly and swiftly address the situation, RBC has signalled — either correctly or incorrectly — that they’re in the second camp.

The positive side of this story is the impact that British Columbians — Victorians in particular — have had in this national story. Nixon’s failure to address the issue properly caused several of Victoria’s unions and B.C.’s businesses to threaten to withdraw their patronage, and this potential boycott contributed to Nixon’s change of tune. He went from “we are compliant with the regulations” to it’s “not about doing only what the rules require.”

It’s heartening to see that people’s commitment to their values can have an impact on the world around us.

(For the record, I don’t think Nixon is an ogre, but a salary of $12.6 million does make you accountable for a thing or two.)

At the end of the day, I don’t much care if RBC was outsourcing legally or illegally — all banks outsource, and that’s problematic whether or not the practice is legal. When we allow our corporations to take advantage of lower standards of living in other countries, we’re saying that foreign workers are literally worth less than Canadians. We shouldn’t be OK with that.

But we also shouldn’t lose sight of this week’s victory. Nixon’s apology is proof that Victorians care that our businesses are run responsibly and ethically, and that we’ll take action to hold them responsible. Good job, Victoria — let’s keep it up.