Why Your ‘Open Door’ Policy Could Be Nailing the Door Shut: When compliance training looks like it came from 1995, employees get the real message
Behind every corporate chorus of “My door is always open” and “We want to hear from you” lurks an uncomfortable truth: Saying it doesn’t make it so. Roxanne Petraeus, a former Army officer and co-founder of compliance training provider Ethena, talks about h ow superficial speak-up policies actually silence the voices companies claim they want to hear. In what feels like a lifetime ago, I served in the U.S. Army, including in Afghanistan during the 2010 surge. Later, I helped train foreign militaries in Cambodia and Mongolia as a part of Special Operations. I eventually left military service in 2016 and went on to co-found Ethena. It’s admittedly a circuitous (difficult) route to compliance , but I remain incredibly proud of my time in service and find that occasionally lessons from the Army inform both the way I build Ethena’s company culture as CEO and how I approach serving the clients we support today. One observation that’s stayed with me is the dang...