Professional Services — about the project
A professional services firm spanning law, audit, and consulting practices, with a steep partnership pyramid and a workforce of 5,200, needed a grievance channel that respected the firm's own confidentiality standards, kept partner track associates unafraid to file, and surfaced patterns before they became publicly litigated cases.
Sector
Professional Services
Workforce
≈ 5,200 across 14 offices
When the partner you'd report is also the partner reviewing you, the math on filing a complaint doesn't work.
Associates and senior associates viewed the existing reporting channel, an HR business partner who reported into a managing partner, as effectively conflicted. Bystanders rarely reported; targets rarely reported; the firm only learned about pattern level issues when an external claim was filed. The firm's own confidentiality standards (legal privilege, client sensitive context) made off the shelf grievance tools unusable.
Anonymous by design. Partner blind routing. Privilege aware retention.
açai Hear's anonymity model, with encrypted identity disclosure, named officer unseal, and an audit log of every access, matched the firm's own privilege model closely enough that the General Counsel was willing to endorse it. Routing rules ensured cases naming any partner never reached that partner's office, region, or practice group. Pattern detection was visible only at the firm wide level.
Retention policies were configured to match the firm's own document retention regime, including litigation hold rules. Bystander friendly intake language explicitly invited third party reports without requiring the bystander to disclose identity. The AI counsellor was tuned for the firm's professional context, surfacing the right clarifying questions without prompting employees to over share.
Self-reporting volume up 41%, escalations down, and a bystander pathway that finally produced signal.
Total case volume rose 41% in the first six months, driven primarily by bystander reports (the new pathway accounted for 38% of intake). Cases that previously would have escalated to external complaint were routinely resolved internally with documented outcomes. The General Counsel's annual report to the executive committee described the platform as 'the first grievance system that didn't get in the way of the firm's own confidentiality model.'
Notably, partner track associate retention improved measurably in the cohort that joined after the platform went live. Internal exit interviews cited 'a real channel' as a meaningful trust signal.