Global People Advisory · Amsterdam
Most workplace problems that end in long-term absence, a grievance or a settlement did not begin as a health or legal matter. They began as a working relationship that went wrong and was not dealt with early enough. FANISI builds the systems, policies and manager capability that catch those problems while they are still fixable, and provides independent capacity for the cases that cannot be handled in-house.
Work-related absence cost Dutch employers €8.3 billion in 2023, and more than half of that came from workload pressure, conflict and unwanted behaviour rather than illness.
Of that €8.3 billion, €4.9 billion is attributed to psychosocial workload. Absence for psychological complaints runs to an average of 63 working days a case, and where employees are absent for those reasons, three quarters say the work itself contributed. This is not primarily a health cost. It is the price of working relationships that went wrong and were not dealt with early enough. The Working Conditions Act (Arbowet) requires employers to address that workload and hold effective procedures for reporting and fair investigation, but the obligation is the smaller half of the argument. Separately, the requirement for organisations with ten or more employees to appoint a confidential advisor (vertrouwenspersoon) has moved onto a firmer statutory footing.
Policies are not the problem. They are infrastructure, and most organisations already have them. What is missing is the internal capacity to run them, and often the willingness to take on work that is difficult, exposing and rarely thanked. Most organisations have no dedicated employee relations function, so it falls to HR generalists asked to be investigator, adviser and support to both parties at once. It is specialist work, and the role was never designed for it. So someone calls an employment lawyer, by which point the risk has crystallised and the job is the case in front of them. The manager is not coached, the failed policy is not revised, and nobody looks across cases to see the pattern. Prevention has no owner, and the same problems return under different names.
For internationally operating organisations, the Partos Code, the CBF Recognition Scheme and the Ministry's ORIA assessment add sector integrity requirements: reporting systems, independent investigation capacity and victim support.
In the months before anyone files anything, while the problem is still a difficult conversation rather than a formal complaint.
Once someone is on long-term absence, that sits with the occupational health service and the case manager. My work is everything upstream of it: why the absence happened, and whether the same conditions are still in place when the person returns.
By someone with no stake in the outcome, and no relationship to protect afterwards.
Every engagement is scoped to leave something behind that works after I have gone.
Independence is structural, not preferential. An internal team cannot credibly investigate its own management. That is precisely where I do my best work.
Nineteen years leading People & Culture across Africa, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas. Head of the Greenpeace International Staff Unit in Amsterdam (2025–2026); previously Director of People & Culture, Global at Right To Play International, leading HR operations and integrity work across 22 countries and 450–600 staff.
Across my career I have handled more than 250 complex employee-relations matters and led or advised on workplace investigations spanning fraud, safeguarding, sexual misconduct, harassment and abuse of authority. I led the review and implementation of a global safeguarding framework and conducted safeguarding audits across country offices, and built an ER framework that cut high-risk cases by 20%.
Whether something has already happened or you simply are not sure your system would hold if it did, the conversation is the same. Tell me where it creaks: a reporting route nobody uses, a stage where cases stall, follow-up that quietly slips. I will tell you what I would do about it, and whether you need me at all. Often you will not, and I will say so.