Horsfield Menzies – Blog vs Behaviour : SIMON HORSFIELD – WHAT LEADERS TOLERATE

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Simon Horsfield has written an article about workplace culture that reads rather differently when you already have Simon Horsfield sitting in your complaint correspondence.

In “WORKPLACE HARASSMENT: PREVENTION MUST BE MORE THAN A POLICY”, he says culture depends upon the “behaviours that managers tolerate, challenge and reward.” He warns about inappropriate conduct becoming normal where organisations “ignore, minimise or deal with it inconsistently”, advocates robust procedures for investigating complaints and describes senior leaders as “tone setters.” Employees, the article says, need confidence that organisations will handle their complaints fairly and consistently.

Excellent.

Now put the blog beside the behaviour.

On 23 March 2025, I sent a detailed complaint about Horsfield Menzies Senior Associate Sam Butler directly to Simon Horsfield, Angus Menzies and Daniel Rubin. It raised concerns about disability-related medical information, Horsfield Menzies’ contact involving my medical centre, disputed litigation statements, costs pressure and correspondence I considered obstructive. The next day, I chased those senior recipients and asked whether anybody intended to investigate and when I could expect an outcome.

Horsfield Menzies never gave me a reasoned, structured investigation outcome setting out what it examined, what it found and why.

So Simon has accidentally constructed one of the cleanest Blog vs Behaviour tests yet. He says culture is what leaders tolerate. Fine. What did the leader do when the complaint landed with him?

Article: “Behaviours That Managers Tolerate, Challenge And Reward”

That sentence sits at the centre of Simon’s article because it strips workplace culture of all its decorative bullshit. Policies matter, but they do not tell you what an organisation actually values. Behaviour does.

He is right. Culture becomes visible when management encounters something awkward enough to require a choice. Does it challenge the conduct and investigate what happened, or does institutional familiarity begin doing its quiet little magic until the allegation somehow becomes less important than the inconvenience caused by the person making it?

Now compare that principle with my treatment. I did not complain about Butler to some generic administrative inbox and hope somebody important might eventually notice. I put the matter directly before senior Horsfield Menzies figures, including the man now telling employers that management tolerance defines culture. Simon needed nobody below him to escalate the issue because the complaint had already reached the fucking penthouse.

That makes the lack of a reasoned investigation outcome more significant than some missing courtesy email. Simon’s own philosophy says the way managers react to behaviour tells you something about organisational culture.

Precisely.

TCAP agrees.

Article: Do Not “Ignore” Or “Minimise” Inappropriate Conduct

Simon specifically warns about conduct becoming normal where organisations ignore it, minimise it or address it inconsistently. Again, excellent advice.

My complaint gave Horsfield Menzies a straightforward opportunity to demonstrate the opposite. The firm could have taken each allegation, checked the relevant correspondence, established why somebody contacted the medical centre, reviewed Butler’s use of the medical material, considered the litigation statements I challenged and then told me what it concluded.

Perhaps every allegation would have failed. Perhaps the firm would have decided that Butler acted properly from beginning to end. Either conclusion would at least have produced an answer capable of scrutiny.

Instead, I never received the sort of evidential account that would let me distinguish between investigated and rejected, considered informally, dismissed at the outset or regarded as coming from somebody we already dislike dealing with. Horsfield Menzies did not explain who examined the allegations, what material informed its view or how it reached its conclusions.

That distinction matters because minimisation rarely arrives wearing a badge marked Minimisation Department. Sometimes it simply looks like a serious complaint producing bugger all visible machinery.

Simon warns clients against exactly that cultural risk.

The inconvenient bastard is that I experienced the problem from the other side of his own door.

Article: “Robust Procedures For Investigating Complaints”

Here the Blog vs Behaviour comparison becomes almost embarrassingly easy. Simon wants employers to operate robust procedures, while Horsfield Menzies itself has since become impressively fluent in investigations. The firm talks about evidence gathering, interviews, findings, recommendations, consistency, quality assurance and proper handling of sensitive complaints. Its Workplace Investigations material presents investigation as the serious professional discipline it ought to be.

Now put that machinery beside what Horsfield Menzies actually communicated to me after 23 March 2025. Nobody gave me an investigation scope. Nobody identified the person examining the allegations, explained which evidence the firm had reviewed or supplied findings addressing the complaint point by point. I received no structured conclusion explaining whether the firm accepted, rejected or criticised Butler’s conduct.

That does not mean nobody inside Horsfield Menzies ever discussed the complaint. They may have spent hours on it for all I know. My point is narrower and considerably harder for the brochure to wriggle away from: the complainant never received a reasoned investigation outcome resembling the robust complaint machinery Horsfield Menzies now recommends to everybody else.

Blog: robust investigation procedures.

Behaviour: good luck establishing what the fuck happened to yours.

That is the series.

Article: Employees Need Confidence That Complaints Will Be Handled Fairly

Simon also understands the importance of confidence. Employees need to believe that raising concerns will produce fair and consistent treatment, but organisations cannot manufacture that confidence by publishing articles declaring that complaints matter. They create it through what happens after somebody actually makes one.

My relationship with Horsfield Menzies had already become adversarial by March 2025. I was a disabled litigant in person fighting its client in an Employment Tribunal. Relations were poor, and some of my communications were angry. None of that made me an easy complainant.

Which is exactly why process mattered.

Fair complaint handling cannot depend upon enjoying the company of the person complaining. If management gives a difficult complainant less scrutiny because it has already formed an unfavourable view of them, the procedure becomes worthless at precisely the moment independence matters most.

Simon’s article gets a tidy hypothetical workplace in which everyone can nod along to the principle. My situation was messier. I was angry, I was the opponent, I had accused one of their own lawyers and active litigation already surrounded the complaint.

Welcome to the fucking test.

Article: Senior Leaders Are “Tone Setters”

This may be Simon’s most unfortunate phrase because it removes the last layer of plausible distance. He was not some middle manager waiting for permission from above.

His name is literally half the firm.

When my complaint arrived, the tone setter was not advising another chief executive about a troublesome manager in somebody else’s business. He had the complaint in his own inbox, involving his own firm and one of its own lawyers.

That changes the question completely. Did Simon create a culture in which allegations about a colleague triggered visibly rigorous scrutiny regardless of who made them? Did he make sure the complainant received a proper explanation? Did seniority produce greater accountability because the allegations concerned Horsfield Menzies’ own professional conduct?

Or did the standards now being marketed to everybody else prove rather easier to articulate than to experience?

I cannot tell readers what private conversations happened inside Horsfield Menzies because I was not there. What I can tell them is what came back to me: no reasoned investigation outcome explaining how the firm had tested the allegations.

Simon’s article tells us to judge leadership culture through behaviour.

There is your fucking comparator.

The Medical Information Was Not A Theoretical Complaint

The substance matters too because this was not an argument over whether Butler had used the wrong salutation. I supplied medical evidence because Cepac disputed disability. Those records contained information about my health, treatment and appointments. During the postponement dispute, Horsfield Menzies used material from that chronology and contacted the medical centre, obtaining further information about alternative appointment availability.

I objected strongly to that conduct.

Whatever legal justification Horsfield Menzies believed supported the contact, my complaint placed the issue squarely before its senior management. The firm had an opportunity to explain what happened, why it considered the enquiries appropriate, what basis supported them and whether anything about the handling required reflection.

An evidence-led complaints process could have done exactly that. If Horsfield Menzies believed my allegation was complete horseshit, brilliant: investigate it and bury it under reasons. Show the records, explain the rationale and close the bastard properly.

Instead, no substantive outcome reached me capable of resolving the dispute.

That is one way complaints metastasise. Not every unresolved complaint survives because the complainant rejects an answer. Sometimes the organisation never gives them an answer robust enough to test in the first place.

Simon’s Article Says Policy Is The Easy Part

The headline itself does half of TCAP’s work: “PREVENTION MUST BE MORE THAN A POLICY.”

Correct. Accountability must be more than a client article too.

The difficult part of organisational ethics has never been writing the principle. Lawyers are exceptionally good at principles. Give them a deadline, a keyboard and a quiet afternoon and they can produce immaculate paragraphs about openness, dignity, trust, culture and consistency until the website positively glows.

The difficulty arrives when applying those principles costs something. Investigating a client’s workforce generates revenue, while examining your own people consumes time and may produce an answer management does not enjoy. Telling a client to challenge a senior employee constitutes advice; challenging somebody sitting three doors down demonstrates culture.

That distinction is exactly why Simon’s article belongs in Blog vs Behaviour. Anyone can sell accountability as professional expertise. The worthwhile test begins when the firm has to consume its own product.

The Work-Experience Lesson Gets Awkward

There is wonderful dark comedy in Simon publishing this piece alongside a work-experience student. The student deserves no criticism whatsoever; the setting alone supplies all the irony required.

A senior solicitor is effectively teaching a young person something worthwhile about professional life. Culture comes from behaviour. Complaints require meaningful investigation. Managers should challenge inappropriate conduct, while senior leaders establish organisational tone through the choices they make.

That is an excellent lesson.

Meanwhile, the instructor had already received my complaint about one of his own firm’s senior lawyers.

If you wanted to teach Blog vs Behaviour as a university module, you could stop there and dismiss the fucking class early. Simon plainly knows the theory because his article demonstrates it beautifully.

The interesting question is what happened when theory walked into his inbox wearing Horsfield Menzies letterhead.

My Treatment Is The Control Sample

This is where the series needs to keep returning because otherwise Blog vs Behaviour risks becoming merely a catalogue of inconvenient quotations. Simon’s article gives us the blog; my complaint supplies the behavioural comparator.

His article says managers define culture through what they tolerate and challenge. In practice, a serious complaint about a Horsfield Menzies lawyer reached Simon directly, yet I received no reasoned outcome explaining how the firm investigated it.

He warns organisations against ignoring, minimising or inconsistently addressing inappropriate conduct. In my case, nobody supplied a structured account of the evidence considered, the enquiries undertaken or the conclusions Horsfield Menzies reached.

Simon calls for robust investigative procedures. My treatment produced none of the visible investigation architecture that his firm later became happy to market to clients. Finally, he says senior leaders set the tone, while my complaint had already gone straight to the senior leader himself.

That is not rhetorical embroidery.

That is the fucking article.

The Cheap Version Was Private

The maddening part is that Horsfield Menzies had the easiest possible version of this. In March 2025, the complaint remained private. Blog vs Behaviour did not exist, Google had indexed no article about the affair and Category Fucking Zero had not yet acquired a name. Neither The Medical Fishing Expedition nor the growing archive of Horsfield Menzies writers supplying their own accountability standards existed.

Simon, Angus and Rubin therefore had an opportunity to examine the complaint, explain their conclusions and either correct the conduct or demonstrate why my allegations lacked merit. That is what an internal complaint route is supposed to offer: a quiet opportunity to settle the record before everything becomes more adversarial and public.

Instead, the issues remained alive long enough to acquire regulators, articles, recurring callbacks and search results. Then Simon published an article explaining why employers must do more than write policies and why leaders reveal culture through what they tolerate.

Mate.

We know.

What Leaders Tolerate

The most damaging thing about Simon Horsfield’s article is not that the advice is bad.

The advice is very fucking good.

Managers should challenge inappropriate behaviour. Organisations should not ignore or minimise complaints. Investigations should have substance. People need confidence in the process, while senior leaders must set the tone through their own behaviour.

Every one of those principles strengthens the question created by my treatment.

On 23 March 2025, Simon Horsfield, Angus Menzies and Daniel Rubin received my complaint about Sam Butler. It concerned one of the firm’s own senior lawyers and raised serious allegations involving medical information and litigation conduct. I followed up the next day and asked whether anyone intended to investigate.

Horsfield Menzies never sent me a reasoned, structured investigation outcome explaining what it examined, what it found and what conclusions it reached.

That is not TCAP inventing a standard after the event.

Simon has now published the standard himself.

So his article leaves one question hanging over the whole page: if culture is defined by what leaders tolerate, challenge and reward, what did Simon Horsfield challenge when the complaint was about Horsfield Menzies?

Because Blog vs Behaviour is not complicated.

The blog tells us what you believe should happen.

Your behaviour tells us whether you fucking meant it.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Sources

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