Plain and simple, there are people in positions of responsibility who shouldn’t be there. Your experience at IKEA will depend on who your leader and/or manager is. There are people who absolutely should not be in those positions but manage to hold on regardless of their inability to perform their jobs well. These people are negative, often abusive, and their actions and attitudes create a toxic work environment for all who work with them or report to them.
Then, there are powerful higher ups who are supposed to oversee these leaders/managers employees who allow their personal prejudices and favoritism to cloud their judgement. Worse, they do nothing to weed out employees who act in ways that are intolerant, racist, or even cruel to people of color and protected classes. Employees who are the targets of the inexcusable behavior are either afraid to speak up or just quit. Anyone who bring concerns about the unacceptable behavior are either ignored or themselves become victims for coming forward. The mechanism for reporting anonymously (iSpeak) sends the complaints back to the very people who handle these things poorly in the first place.
Somehow, in spite of a general acknowledgment that these people consistently handle things badly, they remain in their position of power and retaliate against those who dare to challenge them. No amount of exemplary work history, positive reviews by other leaders, managers and co-workers can overcome the damage done to a whistleblower’s reputation once the incompetent, vindictive administrators put their black mark on the very people who are trying to protect the IKEA values of tolerance and inclusiveness by bringing infractions of those policies to their attention.
