Scribd
Upload
116 views

Restorative Just Culture Checklist: Who Is Hurt?

The Restorative Just Culture checklist aims to repair relationships damaged by an incident by discussing how parties have been affected and deciding how to repair harm. It identifies who is hurt, their needs, and whose obligation it is to meet those needs. The goals of restorative justice include moral engagement of parties, emotional healing, reintegrating practitioners, and organizational learning to address systemic causes of harm.

Uploaded by

jasondalebalcaen
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
116 views

Restorative Just Culture Checklist: Who Is Hurt?

The Restorative Just Culture checklist aims to repair relationships damaged by an incident by discussing how parties have been affected and deciding how to repair harm. It identifies who is hurt, their needs, and whose obligation it is to meet those needs. The goals of restorative justice include moral engagement of parties, emotional healing, reintegrating practitioners, and organizational learning to address systemic causes of harm.

Uploaded by

jasondalebalcaen
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

RESTORATIVE JUST CULTURE CHECKLIST

Restorative Just Culture aims to repair trust and relationships damaged after an incident.
It allows all parties to discuss how they have been affected, and collaboratively decide
what should be done to repair the harm.

ACKNOWLEDGED:
WHO IS HURT? NO YES
Have you acknowledged how the following parties have been hurt:
First victim(s) — patients, passengers, colleagues, consumers, clients
Second victim(s) — the practitioner(s) involved in the incident
Organization(s) — may have suffered reputational or other harm
Community — who witnessed or were affected by the incident
Others — please specify:………………………………….…………

EXPLORED:
WHAT DO THEY NEED? NO YES
Have you collaboratively explored the needs arising from harms done:
First victim(s) — information, access, restitution, reassurance of prevention
Second victim(s) — psychological first aid, compassion, reinstatement
Organization(s) — information, leverage for change, reputational repair
Community — information about incident and aftermath, reassurance
Others — please specify:………………………………………………….…

IDENTIFIED:
WHOSE OBLIGATION IS IT TO MEET THE NEED? NO YES
Have you explored the needs arising from the harms above:
First victim(s) — tell their story and willing to participate in restorative process
Second victim(s) — willing to tell truth, express remorse, contribute to learning
Organization(s) — willing to participate, offered help, explored systemic fixes
Community — willing to participate in restorative process and forgiveness
Others — please specify:…………………………………………………………

READY TO FORGIVE? NO YES


Forgiveness is not a simple act, but a process between people:
Confession — telling the truth of what happened and disclosing own role in it
Remorse — expressing regret for harms caused and how to put things right
Forgiveness — moving beyond event, reinvesting in trust and future together

ACHIEVED:
ACHIEVED GOALS OF RESTORATIVE JUSTICE? NO YES
Your response is restorative if you have:
Moral engagement — engaged parties in considering the right thing to do now
Emotional healing — helped cope with guilt, humiliation; offered empathy
Reintegrating practitioner — done what is needed to get person back in job
Organizational learning — explored and addressed systemic causes of harm

Public Domain. By Professor Sidney Dekker—Griffith University, Delft University and Art of Work. sidneydekker.com
BACKGROUND OF RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
Restorative Just Culture asks: Accountability is forward-looking.
• Who is hurt?
Together, you explore what needs
An account is something
• What do they need?
to be done and who should do it you tell and learn from
• Whose obligation is that?

Retributive Just Culture asks: Accountability is backward-looking,


• What rule is broken? An account is something
finding the person to blame and
• How bad is the breach? you settle or pay
• What should consequences be? imposing proportional sanctions

WHY AVOID RETRIBUTIVE JUST CULTURE?


A retributive just culture can turn into a blunt HR or managerial instrument to get rid of people.
It plays out between ‘offender’ and employer—excluding voices of first victims, colleagues, community.
A retributive just culture is linked with hiding incidents and an unwillingness to report and learn.
The more powerful people are in an organization, the more ‘just’ they find their retributive just culture.
A retributive response doesn’t identify systemic contributions to the incident, thus inviting repetition.

GUIDANCE FOR USE OF RESTORATIVE JUST CULTURE CHECKLIST


On the checklist, mark where you think you are, like so: or so:
Together, the marks reveal what you still need to do.

HURTS, NEEDS AND OBLIGATIONS


An incident causes (potential) hurts or harms. This creates needs in the parties harmed.
These needs produce obligations for the (other) parties involved.
Restorative justice allows parties to discuss their hurts, their needs and the resulting obligations together.
Incidents don’t just harm their (first) victim(s). They also (potentially) harm the second victim, supervisors,
the organization, colleagues, bystanders, families, regulatory relationships and the surrounding
community. All these parties have different needs arising from the harms caused to them.
The checklist allows you to trace the harmed parties, their needs, and the obligations on them/others.

FORGIVENESS
Forgiveness is not a simple act of one person to another. Forgiveness is a relational process that involves
truth-telling, repentance and the repair of trust. It takes time. Trust is easy to break and hard to fix. Some
first victims may be unwilling or unable to forgive. Second victims can also have difficulty forgiving
themselves. Parties need to have patience and compassion, and may end up going separate ways.

GOALS OF RESTORATIVE JUSTICE


• Moral engagement can mean accepting appropriate responsibility for what happened, recognizing
the seriousness of harms caused, and humanizing the people involved. Incidents can overwhelm an
organization (e.g. a legal, reputational, financial, managerial issue). It is easy to forget that it is also a
moral issue: What is the right thing to do?
• Emotional healing aims to deal with feelings such as grief, resentment, humiliation, guilt and shame. It
is a basis for repairing trust and relationships.
• Reintegrating the practitioner expresses the trust and confidence that the incident is about more than
just the individual. Expensive lessons can disappear from the organization if the practitioner is not
helped back into the job, and letting them go tends to obstruct the three other goals. If you fire
someone, what have you fixed?
• Restorative justice is better geared toward addressing the causes of harm because it goes beyond the
individual practitioner and invites a range of stories and voices. Forward-looking accountability is
about avoiding blame, and instead fixing things.

Public Domain. By Professor Sidney Dekker—Griffith University, Delft University and Art of Work. sidneydekker.com

You might also like