The unintended consequences of #MeToo in the work environment
Jack Kelly
Forbes, Board of Directors Blind, Founder and CEO of The Compliance Search Group and Wecruitr.com, Co-host of the Blind Ambition Podcast
Jack J. Kelly January 31, 2018 compliancex
By Jack J. Kelly & Christine Moukazis
Please don’t shoot the messenger. In the last six months, we have witnessed allegations of heinous acts of sexual misconduct in various industries committed by very powerful men, which is clearly opening our eyes to the rampant sexual harassment taking place across the board.
Evidently, this abuse has gone on for decades and has not been spoken about or combated to the extent that it is today in our progressive culture. It is great that we are having a collective dialogue about this issue and taking proactive measures to ensure that things like this won’t happen again or, at the very least, it will limit these transgressions as best as it can. However, we believe there may be some unintended consequences that arise from this #MeToo movement.
For example, Aziz Ansari was recently accused of sexual misconduct and it sparked a national debate. After the anonymous accuser revealed the intimate details of their date, people started to question: is this sexual misconduct or just a date gone wrong?
The fear of being accused of sexual wrongdoings, where a claim from an anonymous person can make you lose your job or entire career (ultimately, making you perceived as a sexual pariah), is prevalent.
One of the themes running through this movement is every person making an accusation is deemed as honest and righteous and everyone accused is immediately perceived as guilty. We have a judicial system set in place to prevent the persecution of a person until he or she is proven guilty. And yet, in today’s society with mob mentality and Groupthink, this is not the case. Now, we are not saying that we should be unbelieving of a victim and unsympathetic toward them. Victim-shaming is never okay. We just think when a person’s life hangs in the balance, we ought to tread lightly and not act brashly.
So now, so imagine you have a mid-level manager in a boring company in the middle of nowhere, he gets accused of sexual misconduct and loses his job. What happens to everyone in this organization? Nobody will speak of it openly and honestly, in fear of being perceived as misogynistic or on the wrong side of history.
People who work at companies are mere human beings and are innately subject to fears and worries. We worry that those anxieties surrounding sexual harassment (or even racism, sexism, and ageism, to take it one step further) will create a homogeneous work environment in company cultures, in order to prevent liabilities and implications.
In selecting people to hire, managers may ask, do I want to take that chance in hiring a person of a certain group and will it, in turn, pose a threat to my career? If an accusation is made, will I immediately be removed from my post and will my career and reputation be forever tarnished? Will I be banished to social Siberia?
This pushes people to hire individuals who are exactly like them because they are least likely to file claims or grievances.
Out of fear of being perceived as discriminatory and having to take legal action, a manager has to document every interaction or keep detailed records on an employee, so when they approach the employee for grievances in poor performance, the employee can’t fire back prejudicial claims of racism, sexism, or ageism.
We envision a manager not productively engaging with their employees. And if they do, the conversations would be curt and devoid of all jocular banter, out of fear that his words and intentions could be misconstrued. Continuing on this path, managers will one day just be limited to a robotic, pithy script drafted by the organization’s legal team.
How will that restrictive, social interaction between management and employees be beneficial and effective for employees? It is setting them up for failure.
It goes without saying, but these concerns do not take away from all the issues that people are facing today. However, it would be na?ve of us to not talk about. Perhaps, once the initial wave of bringing this to light is over, we can collectively work on what to actually do about it. How do we make it fair that people don’t immediately lose their jobs and livelihoods, all the while remaining sympathetic and believing of those accusing?
#MeToo
Innovative Leader with a passion for technology
7 年I believe you are wrong! Yes, it is important to hear both sides and not to overreact as well as not to downplay the accusations. But keep in mind that there is not only a single isolated incident that leads to the mid-level management guy from Boring Limited to lose his job, but rather a multitude of misbehaviour, smaller incidents and the general perception of disrespect towards peers. An employee who has no such history what so ever and is perceived as fair and respectful is, First not very likely to be accused (or wrongly accused) and is, Second not very likely to be removed from the company without investigation. That shouldn’t mean that a nice guy can’t be a predator or every jerk deserves to be fired without scrutiny, every case should be handled discrete, fast and thorough. After the German Military has first allowed female soldiers to join the troops similar issues and concerns arose. But these did not persist. At first superiors thought they had to treat this “different soldier” somewhat special. So they left them alone in the shower, they weren’t insulted or humiliated. Nobody was inspecting the female quarters alone and so on and so on. And indeed a number of complaints were raised from female soldiers against their superior’s behaviour. Most of this was perceived as normal at this time and thus the way female soldiers were treated differently and with more fear and care. But not only the way female soldiers were treated changed, also the way every soldier was treated changed. Over time a cultural change occurred and is still ongoing, identifying behaviour that is just inappropriate no matter what gender is affected. Harassing soldiers in showers, singing “traditional” songs that are actually about rape and many others had been normal in the male dominated military for too long. We were just missing and important different perspective to identify this ill behaviour. It was already damaging our culture long before the first female soldier joined and our superiors should have long before started to treat people different. So after this initial fear went away (almost) and everybody was treated more humane, we actually all became better teams. Erasing behaviour that could lead to a complaint or sexual harassment accusation (even if wrongly interpreted or exaggerated) will not lead your managers to become robots, afraid of human interaction. It will make them more aware of the motivation, perspective and feelings of their team and thus make them more humane leaders. Those who can motivate with a shared vision and idea and don’t need force, harassment or humiliation to bring their teams to work for them.
Uncovering information in numerous, prominently offshore, jurisdictions, by using various tools including those afforded under civil and criminal law and insolvency regimes.
7 年Very nice article , to the point. At the end of the day we are talking about another compliance topic. Point one: interesting to see how few comments or likes appear next to this comment so far. Also, it is the first article on this topic I see, while for more than half a year this is the hottest compliance topic out there.... Point two: as with any other compliance topic, it is important to find the balance between enforcing the requirements of the society versus letting corporations to create their culture (with all possible consequences on the workforce, client and supplier markets).