Corporate America has a transparency problem. According to the Deloitte Insights 2024 Global Human Capital Trends, 86% of leaders surveyed "say that the more transparent the organization is, the greater the workforce trust." Yet the vast majority of those same leaders are doing little to foster transparency or trust within their organizations by using silencing mechanisms like forced arbitration and nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) to prevent their workers from revealing workplace toxicity from the moment they sign onboarding paperwork.

Though you may not know it, these silencing mechanisms are buried deep in your workplace contracts or other dense paperwork. Sometimes, they are sent to you by your employer in an email with an innocuous subject line that you open, unaware that by doing so you have "agreed" to give up your right to sue or even to discuss what happened to you in the event you face a toxic workplace experience, such as racial, age, or gender discrimination. Sometimes, they are offered to you in exchange for a promotion or severance or settlement.

You may not realize that you signed away your right to a jury trial or to even talk about a bad workplace experience with anyone, including coworkers, family members, or even a clergy member or therapist, until it is too late to do anything about it.

Regardless of the reason, 82% of all American workers are bound by forced arbitration, which means that they must resolve any dispute with their employer in a secret chamber where an arbitrator -- typically an older, white man who has had no experience being discriminated against himself -- has the power to decide whether you have a claim and how much you should be compensated for it.