‘Keep Dancing!’ – A different kind of ‘Strictly Story’

2024 marks the 20^th anniversary of Strictly Come Dancing, the BBC’s Saturday evening flagship entertainment show.

But this year, the ‘Strictly story’ has looked very different. Heartwarming tales of personal growth, renewed joie de vivre (and revived careers), have been replaced with an altogether less ‘sparkly’ tale of bullying, sexual harassment and toxic workplace culture.

The relationship between the celebrity and their professional dance partner has always formed a central part of the show’s dynamic. In the last few months, complaints of bullying raised by one of last year’s contestants, Amanda Abbingdon, about her partner Giovanni Pernice, have resulted in Pernice announcing he will not be returning this year. And another professional dancer was removed by the BBC after video footage showed him hitting his celebrity partner during training.

These high-profile scandals have shone a spotlight onto Strictly’s workplace culture and some worrying testimonies have emerged from ex-employees. A video editor spoke of how junior staff would tell her about how they’d experienced “shouting, screaming, and being insulted to an extraordinary level”. An investigation by the Observer found that an employee had received sexist and sexualised comments from a senior member of staff. The culture has been described as “toxic, particularly for junior staff”.

There are obvious reputational issues here, especially for a show which outwardly lauds its inclusive culture. There are also important employment and HR considerations. What can we learn from this particular ‘Strictly story’?

• Policies are important: Organisations should have clearly defined policies for what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable workplace behaviour. Employees should be made aware of them and trained on them.
• Take action if issues are reported, at all levels Employees need to be confident that reported issues will be investigated. They need to see action being taken when an issue is raised. This is even more important among younger employees. Most of those who have spoken-out about Strictly’s workplace culture have been junior employees who felt that their junior standing was used to coerce them into silence. Junior employees may also feel less heard or believed when complaints are raised.
• Encourage reporting: Some ex-employees talked about a culture of silence amongst junior staff, who were allegedly told that they should not complain as they were lucky to be working on such a high-profile show. Employers need to break-down such barriers by training managers to have open dialogue with employees. Different ways in which concerns can be reported should also be considered, including mechanisms for anonymous reporting.
• Take responsibility: BBC Studios responded to press reports of a toxic culture within Strictly by stating it “does not recognise” the claims made against them. Employees need to have faith that their concerns will be given a fair hearing. If they don’t have this, the business will end up with an under-reporting issue. Do not assume that because you experience the workplace positively, this is the case for everyone.

These steps are all the more important because, from 26^th October this year, a new positive duty to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace comes into force. Under the new law, compensation in sexual harassment cases can be increased by up to 25% if a workplace has failed to take steps to prevent sexual harassment occurring.