An internal committee can be perfectly constituted and still be useless. We have seen it. The right number of members, the right mix, the external member in place, the policy filed, the names on the intranet. Every box ticked. And not one case handled properly in three years.
On paper it exists. In practice it does not. The difference between those two states is not in the composition. It is in a handful of things the composition never mentions.
We have sat with committees that worked and committees that only complied, and the gap between them is rarely legal. It is human.
Composition is the easy part
Building the committee to the required shape is a one-time task. You appoint members, you bring in the external person, you write it down. It takes a few weeks and then it is done. It is necessary. It is also the part everyone finishes and then mistakes for the whole job.
The hard part comes after. It is whether those members can actually do what the role asks: receive a complaint without flinching, run a fair inquiry, protect everyone involved, and reach a conclusion they can stand behind. Composition gets you a committee. It does not get you a functioning one.
So the question we ask clients is not "who is on your committee." It is "what has your committee actually done, and how well."
What the law sets up, and what it does not
The law sets up a structure and a process. It tells you who should sit, what timelines apply, how a complaint should move. What it cannot do is install judgement, courage, or care. Those have to come from the people in the room.
A committee needs more than its members. It needs:
- A chair who is willing to lead, not just preside.
- Members who understand what a fair inquiry looks like in practice.
- A clear, private way for a complaint to reach them.
- A process for handling conflict of interest before it contaminates a case.
- Someone who keeps records properly and confidentially.
- A habit of reviewing what happened, not just filing it.
None of these is exotic. Most committees that fail are missing several.
The chair sets the tone
We have learned to watch the chair first. Everything flows from that person. A chair who treats the role as a formality produces a committee that does the same. A chair who takes it seriously, who reads the file, who asks the hard questions, pulls the whole group up with them.
The chair also decides how the committee behaves when a case is difficult. Do they rush to close it? Do they protect the respondent because he is senior? Do they let the complainant's manner decide how much they are believed? These choices are not written in any policy. They are made in the room, by the person leading it.
A weak chair does not usually do anything dramatic. They just let things drift. The meeting gets postponed. The inquiry takes longer than it should. The conclusion is vague. The complainant walks away feeling that nothing really happened. Because nothing really did.
Training that means something
Most committees have been trained. Few have been trained in a way that changes what they do. A slideshow once a year, an attendance sheet, and everyone goes back to work. That is compliance, not capability.
What helps is practice. Walking through a real scenario, step by step, with the awkward parts left in. What do you do when the complainant is frightened? When the respondent is a friend of the chair? When the evidence is thin and the stakes are high? Committees that have rehearsed these moments handle them better than committees that have only read about them.
Our own POSH training for committees is built around this, because the certificate matters far less than what a member can do on the day. A trained committee and a certified committee are not the same thing. Aim for the first.
Records, confidentiality, and trust
A committee is only as good as the trust it earns. If people do not believe their complaint will be handled privately and fairly, they will not bring it. Then the committee sits empty, and the organisation tells itself there is nothing to handle.
So records matter. Not for the audit, though they help there too. They matter because they show that a case was handled with care. Confidentiality matters because it is the price of people speaking. And consistency matters because the second person to come forward will hear what happened to the first.
A committee that leaks, that delays, that decides before it listens, teaches the whole organisation not to bother. That lesson is very hard to unlearn.
What a working committee looks like
A functioning committee has a short list of habits. It meets on a schedule, not only when there is a crisis. It knows how a complaint reaches it and keeps that route private. It handles conflicts of interest openly. It completes its inquiries within the timelines and records why if it cannot. It reviews each case afterwards to ask what it would do differently.
It also talks about prevention, not only response. What is happening on the floor that keeps generating complaints? What training would actually help? What does the pattern of cases tell us about the culture? A committee that only reacts is doing half its job.
None of these habits requires more members or a longer policy. They require only that the people on the committee treat the role as real work, not a title. The structure was the beginning. This is the rest of it.
Existence is not the goal
The aim was never to have a committee on file. The aim was to have one that works, that people trust, and that handles the cases that reach it with fairness and speed. Composition gets you the first. Everything else has to be built, deliberately, by the people who sit on it.
So before your next audit, ask your committee a plain question. Tell me about the last case you handled, from the first complaint to the final decision. If the answer is thin, or if there is no answer at all, you have a committee that exists. You do not yet have one that works.