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Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?

#211
1. While you need a lawyer for advice and to cover your ass, lawyers can’t lead. Lawyers offer advice and dot i’s. Weak leaders delegate their responsibilities to lawyers.

2. You need to assess your culture. Is this one bad apple or is this something larger. The work hard, party hard, live in the office startup culture can be a breeding ground for this. Not that you can’t have this environment and succeed, but you need to understand it and put checks and safeguards in place. One option is to designate a sexual harassment rep and make sure everybody knows this person’s roll and that they can talk to them, possibly anonymously.

3. Talk to your female employee and let her know you have to do something. You can’t ignore it as that effects the company and thus everyone. Get her opinion about how much of a problem his continued presence in the office will be. She may not want him to be fired as she may feel partially responsible (not saying she is in any way, but we don’t know how she’ll feel).

4. Talk to the bizdev employee. Document the meeting and any outcomes or remediation. Is this a problem of just being junior and not yet having the ability to separate barroom behavior from the work place. Why did you hire this person? Are those qualities still there and does this person have potential? Only you know.

Talk to a lawyer, but remember, you are the leader, they are not. Walk through the steps and make the tough decision about what is best for everyone. Reactionary firings can be almost as negative on your culture (not your liability though) as doing nothing. Be the type of leader who talks to their people and tries to come to a decision that is best for everyone. Don’t be the leader who makes reactionary decisions behind closed doors.

Also, don’t talk about ‘kicking someones ass’. As a leader, this is almost as bad as calling someone a MILF. Step back from your emotions. After a decade in the military, part of it working in legal, I’ve seen a lot worse: rape, child porn, attempted murder, grand theft, fraud. While obnoxious, calling someone MILF is pretty far down on the scale. This makes it tougher in some ways since firing isn’t automatically the only response.

Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?

#212
post #3

Lawyer lawyer lawyer LAWYER lawyer LAWYER . I think the consensus in the grown-up business world is "fire immediately for cause." I would bet substantial money that when you lawyer lawyer lawyer they will advise you to do that and document the heck out of it. The calculus is really, really simple: if you don't, then you will with probability approaching one get this incident or a similar incident cited during a threa…

Really? If he's _just_ hired him, I presume any probationary period would be ongoing and you can let the guy go consequence free? Thus, the most obvious least path of resistance is just to let him go and not really give him cause. I'm not from the US, thus I'm genuinely asking the question. With that said, aren't we potentially overreacting here? Quite a lot of romances spark in the office. The guys tried it on, he's…

> With that said, aren't we potentially overreacting here? Quite a lot of romances spark in the office. The guys tried it on, he's been rubuked, hopefully he got the point and will settle down.

I see your point, but if you're an employee and you're sharing that "so and so texted me this ", what's the motivation behind that? She said she doesn't want to cause problems, but if it's something between two adults and not involving work, I would imagine she would just not say anything, particularly to management.

OP needs to read into their conversation, it's hard to armchair quarterback this over the internet. At the end of the day it's ultimately easier for us to say fire for a multitude of reasons, many of which are likely valid.

Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?

#213
post #205
post #184

I'm baffled by this thread. Yes it might not be appropriate and yes it might necessitate action, but fire him immediately when the "milf" handled it, ended it, and the situation was finished? He didn't push it further than his perception of her comfort level. Furthermore, the term "MILF" has transcended its literal meaning. It doesn't, at this stage in time, literally mean "I want to fuck you". It's a normal Pop Cult…

It's an acronym. It can't transcend its literal meaning. The amount of convenient and false assumptions you made in your post is indeed baffling.

I understand that it's an acronym. You mustn't be thinking straight if you feel acronyms can't transcend their literal interpretation. Spend 10 seconds thinking about it and you'll think of many nouns which originated as acronyms.

Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?

#214
post #174

So, I am female. When working at a Fortune 500 company, I once emailed a colleague and copied our two bosses. I advised him to never speak that way to me again. It went to HR. I got interviewed. I assume he got interviewed. He was not fired. He never spoke that way to me again. I eventually reestablished trust with this man and we got on well. I suspect he got sensitivity training. I was not told what went down. It w…

Why will firing him worsen the problem? I would fire this guy immediately. > Men and women need to learn to interact at work. Men should not need sensitivity training to interact with women at work.

Consider the case of a small startup with only one or two female employees. If OP does in fact fire him and provide training to staff it wouldn't take much deductive reasoning for the rest of the employees to figure out who was involved with the incident. Maybe the accused was favored in the office and some employees take his side. Maybe some employees have a bias that is set off by what they deem to be necessary sexual harassment training.

Just to be clear I think he should be fired, but it's a shitty situation to be in with a small office and a small number of, presumably close, employees.

Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?

#215
post #174

So, I am female. When working at a Fortune 500 company, I once emailed a colleague and copied our two bosses. I advised him to never speak that way to me again. It went to HR. I got interviewed. I assume he got interviewed. He was not fired. He never spoke that way to me again. I eventually reestablished trust with this man and we got on well. I suspect he got sensitivity training. I was not told what went down. It w…

I applaud you for this comment and how you handled your situation. Hopefully the man in your story also apologized to you.

People are people and in a moment of idiocy can make stupid comments. Every single person has said something stupid at some point. It is how we handle things afterwards that matter.

Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per the side of the story we know. Do you know something not present in this narrative? The use of 'milf', whether it's derogatory or a compliment, will depend entirely on the context of the larger conversation. Something we don't have. Something which apparently the OP didn't have either.

And she felt so flattered that she went to her boss to show him the texts?

That's the clincher for me. If she'd enjoyed that - and it's at least conceivable that someone would take it as a compliment - then the boss wouldn't know and no harm would be done.

Remember, it's perfectly legal to date your coworkers. You can ask them out and everything! But the moment they move to stop your advances, you must cease immediately. It sounds like she was at least initially open to out-of-work conversation (as evidenced by her agreeing to switch to WhatsApp), but once she become uncomfortable it should have ended.

Acceptable:

You: We should go out sometime. I've never asked before, but would you be interested?

Your colleague (NOT subordinate): No.

You: OK, back to business. Hey, what time did they move our meeting to?

Not acceptable:

You: I know I ask you this daily, but...

You: I'm not really supposed to date people who report to me, but...

You: We went out one time and you broke it off, but...

You: This was OK last week before you asked me to stop, but...

Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?

#217

Not a lawyer. When the female employee says she doesn't want to cause trouble, it just means that, if you are going to do something about this situation, then you better own it. Make this a problem between you and the employee who acted inappropriately. i.e. if/when he demonstrates understandable reasons for acting the way he did, you don't turn this around on her.

Consider that when a woman reports harassment and says "I don't want to cause trouble," it's coming from a lifetime of not having her experiences taken seriously and situations like this backfiring. Boys will be boys, you shouldn't be dressing like that, maybe you shouldn't have lead him on.. and then the woman reporting the harassment gets labeled as the troublemaker instead of the real perpetrator.

Demonstrate that you are taking her experiences seriously and behavior like that exhibited by your new employee is not acceptable. Get him out of there.

Re: Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?

#220
post #184

I'm baffled by this thread. Yes it might not be appropriate and yes it might necessitate action, but fire him immediately when the "milf" handled it, ended it, and the situation was finished? He didn't push it further than his perception of her comfort level. Furthermore, the term "MILF" has transcended its literal meaning. It doesn't, at this stage in time, literally mean "I want to fuck you". It's a normal Pop Cult…

Picture yourself, as an owner of the company, explaining to a jury how "Mother I'd Like to Fuck" doesn't constitute a hostile environment in the course of a sexual harassment lawsuit. Maybe with a jury that includes someone your grandmother's age. And maybe not as a result of this particular conversation, but the next time it happens.

I'm not saying the owner should not be concerned at all. He should clearly log this incident and follow up at a later date to ensure that similar incidents haven't continued. If the female worker is satisfied that they haven't continued then there's no way that a court would construe this as sexual harassment, ever.

Also, "milf" is in standard printed dictionaries at this stage. I haven't ever used the term, but I understand that people simply use it as a colloquial noun and don't tend to use it as a literal proposal. I'm confused that so many people in the thread seem to think this.

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