An audit works in a way that an auditor must have full, unlimited access to all employees they chose. Not providing it will make the audit fail. The board has to sign this free access is granted.
An auditor never will make their judgement based on just hearsay. In their assessment, they write based on what they came to their conclusion. If you find a reference of „we only heard it from an employee and draw that conclusion“, please show it to me.
In the past, several staff reports of harrassment and health problems were reported but not followed up. People were not encouraged to speak out, they were actually retaliated for doing so, in a way that, as confirmed by others, was suitable to affect their professional careers.
Someone needs to provide data to the auditors, eg a list of decisions, legal statements, accounting ledgers, bank statements and so on. That is not done by the board. In fact, many daily tasks are handled by the employees, in the way decided and set forth by the board. TDF hires employees because the amount of work a volunteer board can do is limited. In the audit reports, the VAT audits and the social security audits you can read that all the administrative work is in perfect order, even if TDF had to deal with some challenges from the past here as well.
Not providing data or not providing unlimited access to employees is an audit failure straight away. Now someone has to do the challenging work to provide all the data, which also contains problematic items that eg were identified by lawyers and shared with the board. If the employees don’t do it, the audit fails, it they do it, they might get retaliated for doing so. That’s why a protection is needed and was required by several legal counsels.
You see with another published decision here that members of the board who are affiliated with ecosystem companies were the contacts for staff reviews, when part of the work of the staff is on tenders. Even more, these very staff members were asked to pay (!) all tenders (including the one to their bosses companies) in the calendar year.
If you know of any other organizations who have people in a double role and have payment of own contracts as part of staff performance reviews, I would be interested in a pointer. It is unlikely to match compliance, isn’t it?
I would also be interested to hear what benefits an employee has in damaging their own employer, as seems suggested here. Losing their job is likely not a benefit, isn’t it? What is the personal interest in creating a problematic situation that not only the employees need to help solve, but also risk their employer vanishing, so they lose their job?
As you see from all the recent publications, this board is encouraging their employees to share information and documents with trustees. The situation surely was different with previous boards.
The fact that only two approvals were given doesn’t render the decision invalid, but it is not an encouraging situation for the employees who have to deal with the audit.
I am glad many more minutes and decisions were published. We surely can improve the presentation of these. It was a lot of work in times when a lot of other issues keep TDF busy, so there is room for improvement.
As for asking employees - I am here, and as long as I can be sure to not be retaliated again, I am usually willing to answer any question. I might not give details on everything for one reason or the other (missing staff protection, concerns privacy of persons, ongoing legal topic etc.), but from my actions you hopefully see I am all for transparency.