As the #MeToo movement permeates the current culture, employers are looking for ways to protect themselves and their employees from harassment and discrimination, while employees are beginning to expect corporate cultures that make them feel valued and safe.
Dallas-based Work Shield is looking to provide that protection to companies and their workforces. Company founder Jared Pope sees the company almost as literal armor for other businesses, protecting them by taking investigation and resolution of harassment and discrimination claims into a third party, creating transparency and trust in the process.
“I started asking myself what’s really solving this problem and what’s causing it, because it’s happened forever; it came down to really three things: fear, the employer and corporate culture,” Pope said. “This isn’t just a woman issue, this isn’t just a man issue, it’s an all of our issue because we’re all in the workplace.”
Founded in 2018, Work Shield offers companies and employees a platform to report and track harassment and discrimination claims. Reports can be filed through the company’s call center or via the internet. Once a report is made, Work Shield contracts with a local law firm, sending trained attorneys to investigate the claim and make recommendations for resolution. Reports are made and distributed to all parties to keep a clear record of the incident.
Pope said that often times the solution to the issue does not even require a settlement, that most employees want to feel like the claim was taken seriously and that they are valued.
“And what we’re finding through all of these investigations we’ve handled is that the number one thing is the role of apology,” Pope said. “Most employees, they either just want an apology, or they just want to know that they’re heard.”
According to statistics from 2017 by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, there were more than 84,000 discrimination charges filed, resulting in about $398 million in costs to businesses and governments. The average time for resolution of an issue was 318 days. However, Work Shield has an average turnaround time of about five days.
Creating a corporate culture is paramount to tackling workplace harassment and discrimination, Pope said, adding that the average employer has a 4 percent incident rate of these issues. He hopes Work Shield’s platform will allow employers to show that they take incidents seriously, while giving employees a place for their issues and concerns to be heard without fear that the company will not investigate itself properly.
“What I often tell people is just because you put this on doesn’t mean you have a problem, what it means is that you partner with Work Shield; what it means is you have zero-tolerance towards harassment, you have zero-tolerance for discrimination, and you’re going to put a procedure in place that if it does happen, we will know about it and it’s not allowed,” Pope said. “You’re protecting your company, you’re protecting your culture, and you’re protecting your employees.”
Settling a claim can be costly, sometimes reaching into the hundreds of thousands. Work Shield offers its protection plan to companies based on the number of employees, costing about $2 to $4 per person per month. The company currently has about seven full-time employees and covers more than 50,000 employees across the globe.
Pope said that the company has been growing rapidly and expects a good year ahead, as it prepares for a capital raise. Recently Work Shield launched an expanded line of service, covering all Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects employees from discrimination based on race, sex, color, religion, and national origin. In addition, it will be adding psychological counseling services and an ethics and fraud hotline to its services.
"You’re protecting your company, you’re protecting your culture, and you’re protecting your employees."
Work Shield recently expanded across the pond with a client in Aberdeen, Scotland, and is in talks with large companies that have thousands of employees. It is also planning on releasing a 2.0 version of its platform software, which will feature a new design, as well as different platforms for employers, employees, Work Shield administration, and lawyers.
“I think companies are starting to realize that this is a big issue and we can’t just do a survey, we can’t just put something in place that may or may not detect the issues; we actually have to have real resolution, we have to have a real product, a real solution,” Pope said. “If it’s my little way to make the world a better place, then great because I’m impacting thousands and thousands of employees’ lives.”
