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Hostile Work Environments: A Lesson from the Frontline
June 8, 2008
It’s hard to believe that things can go as wrong as they do sometimes. In fact, I was told about a situation last week that I’m still trying to reconcile.
Here’s what happened. A company made a job offer to a man for a senior executive spot after a long and complicated negotiation. He started. Day one went swimmingly – or so it seemed. But that night the CEO of the company received an email from the new employee stating that he had no choice but to rescind his acceptance of the offer. Did I mention that he’d already started?
Apparently, this gentleman had seen a printout from the Internet hanging on the wall that had something to do with politics. It was a joke – one of those tongue-in-cheek things that circulate through cyberspace daily. This one specifically, was a “Top 10” list of what it takes to be either a Democrat or Republican – I can’t remember which one. But because it poked fun at different voting groups, and this man belonged to one that is also a protected class, he felt he couldn’t work there. I found that to be a bit immature.
Naturally, as it should have been, the CEO’s first inclination was to call this man and talk about it – you know, work it out. He was fully prepared to admit that it was not well thought out to have such a document on display, and that it was a factor of having a small and familial business. There was nothing graphic or obscene, mind you, just the kind of thing you might hear in Jay Leno or David Letterman’s opening monologue. In retrospect, the CEO saw that as companies grow, so too do lackadaisical attitudes and comfort zones need to change. Lesson learned. Moving on. But his lawyer told him that it wouldn’t be prudent to make contact and/or try to salvage the relationship with this man who quit on his first day via an email. Why? Because it had “hostile work environment” written all over it. What?
Frankly, I’m not sure about a system that has set us up to avoid conversations, apologies and efforts to understand one another because embedded within it is the implicit threat of being sued. It’s unfortunate. We’ve litigated “I’m sorry I may have offended you,” right out of our organizational dialogue. Instead, managers get tossed into a day of sensitivity training to cover their butts in the event that they get thrown before a judge. Something is not right here.
In the end, we’re kidding ourselves if we think that the “protections” in place to help people on one side of the discrimination equation, haven’t served to hurt an equal amount on the other as companies rationalize going with the “other” candidate because it’s “safer.” So as the system tries to control one form of bias, it gives rise to a second. The net result? We have a zero-sum game.
Posted by Donna Flagg on June 8, 2008 | Comments (5)
