7 ms·

Something Ive never understood (not in the sense of I dont agree. What I really mean is I'm uneducated on the topic and would like to find out more, but my sear

by shados 8y ago

Something Ive never understood (not in the sense of I dont agree. What I really mean is I'm uneducated on the topic and would like to find out more, but my searches returned little, since it's a pretty heated topic), is why the company should be the primary responsible entity for this. Maybe for light cases where someone just need a stern talking to, but a lot of the cases are downright criminal acts. Having a private entity that has a vested interest in the events seem...unwise. Shouldn't it be better to have law enforcement handle it, and have companies forced to cooperate instead? Like, if it's someone who said something slightly inappropriate/gray area to another and just needs a stern talking to, sure. Have a process/HR deal with it. But so many occurrences are so much worse than that... Not the same situation at all, but similar reasoning: I once had a colleague corner me in the office because of a disagreement in a meeting earlier in the day, where they threatened to "meet me outside to settle things". I mentioned it to my boss/HR/etc, and sure enough, they told me to just talk it out with them and were generally useless. I ended up having to quit. In hindsight, it wasn't my boss I needed to talk to, it was the freagin cops. (Not, of course, cops are frequently useless too, and that's a separate problem...but if we have to change the world somewhere, maybe pushing it all on private entities isn't the best thing to do in this case).

kiliantics 8y ago
As you point out, the cops are often useless too. Now imagine you call the cops on your boss and they show up to talk with him/her. How might your boss be treating you after this?
- kazagistar 8y ago
  The same is true for HR; that's why there is additional rles around retaliation.
notyourwork 8y ago
Sadly the police don’t have the resources to go “investigate” every time someone said let’s settle this outside. Where do you drawn the line for stern talking and police investigation. Your idea sounds good in theory but in practice doesn’t work.
- jamiegreen 8y ago
  >Sadly *Thankfully
  - notyourwork 8y ago
    You're probably more correct, I was trying to empathize with OP but I do agree I don't think the police are the right party for this mediation.
    - belorn 8y ago
      What if we created a new government organization to fill where we find that the police is not the right party to address illegal behavior. We could call them peace officer which mediate in disputes with power to fire and discipline people with the exact same requirement and behavior that we want out of the perfect HR department. This way we would raise the standard to be equal for all people that are employed regardless of company.
      - notyourwork 8y ago
        Civil court?
gnode 8y ago
In these situations, companies aren't sued for harassment, but for having a hostile work environment; allowing harassment to persist (e.g. by retaining harassing employees). If an employer has effective mechanisms to deal with cases of harassment, then it shouldn't be liable. Even if a harasser was prosecuted or sued successfully, if the company retained them, that would create a hostile work environment for the harassee, and make the employer liable. There's also the case of quid pro quo harassment, where a superior makes someone's career progression tied to the harassment, in which case it may be harder to distinguish the company's liability from the harasser. But even in such cases, an effective system to report such behaviour can mitigate the company's liability. In such cases, claims often surround retaliation for reporting harassment (e.g. employee transferred, demoted or fired in response to a harassment report.)
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  I'm surprised at how many other responses here are saying "because the police don't have the resources to investigate" and similar. This reply gets to the more fundamental point: companies are doing a different thing than police investigations or even civil suits over harassment. They can't undo the harassment, they can't punish the harasser (beyond termination with cause), or force the harasser to compensate their victim. Rather, the goal is to create a workplace where employees are not harassed. This is good for both legal reasons (hostile work environment suits) and obvious moral (harassment is bad) and practical (people will quit) reasons. If a coworker mocked or punched me every day at work, it might or might not produce a complaint to the police or a civil suit against the coworker. But it would certainly be something that made my employment untenable and a reasonable employer would react to that. People are in general not demanding that employers act in place of the police, they're demanding that they act to stop sex-related hostility at least as thoroughly as they would act against other hostility. It's the purview of the company because it's a completely different task than what courts or police would do.
jib 8y ago
The police are not primarily there to solve civil disputes and disagreements. There is a pretty wide area where things are not illegal and possible to convict, but you would probably want to do something. The police’s mindset (at least the ones I’ve interacted with) is one of three things: 1. Deterrance from crimes to be committed (doesn’t apply here) 2. Achieve convictions for crimes (would also not apply in your situation) 3. Deploy force to break up ongoing altercations (also doesn’t apply) 2 is interesting. Talk about a specific alleged crime with a police officer and they will not be discussing whether it was a crime or not much, nor if the person committed it, they will be discussing whether it can be proven in a court of law or not that a criminal act was committed by a specific person, beyond reasonable doubt. It is a purely pragmatic operation of “how can I provide proof that something occurred that is against this list of rules”. The police are in no way useless, most people just misunderstand what their job is. Their job is not to dispense justice, or make sure you get your revenge. In your specific situation it sucked, but from a police point of view what would they do? Is there a crime? Maybe. Would they be able to present a chain of evidence proving beyond reasonable doubt that a crime occurred - most assuredly not. Would a conviction, however unlikely, achieve something meaningful? Nope, the guy would get a fine at most, but would still be working with you. On the other hand, an employer is fully within their right to fire someone for a situation like that. They do not have the same burden of proof, they can refer to previous records of incidents, and the consequences would better match what you’d want (removal of the hostile environment).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- gambler 8y ago
  >Their job is not to dispense justice, or make sure you get your revenge. This shouldn't be the job of HR either. What you describe is what civil courts are for. From societal perspective, it is their exact purpose: to dispense justice and prevent revenge. If they don't work, they need to be made to work, instead of relegating this function to random people with random training and random incentives following random policies that are ultimately designed to safeguard companies, not employees.
dkarl 8y ago
The reason is that the bar is simply too low. Or rather, the bar for taking legal action is so high that it would not in a million years create an acceptable work environment at Google. Think about it from another perspective. If Google wants to cherry-pick the brightest and best educated people from society, they're going to have to meet a higher standard themselves. Would you want that standard encoded in law for the rest of the state? If so, how would you, in a democracy, impose a standard crafted by a subset of the cultural elite for themselves on the rest of the state or the country? Changing cultural norms drag the law behind them, not the other way around. The legal standard will lag behind for a long time, and Google's employees are part of the force that will be leading it forward.
HillaryBriss 8y ago
> I ended up having to quit. wow. that sounds like a really bad situation. i mean, did you quit because of an ongoing threat of violence from this individual? the company should have offered other remedies before it came to that.
gumby 8y ago
> ...why the company should be the primary responsible entity for this...Having a private entity that has a vested interest in the events seem...unwise. All other issues aside: the company should want to make an environment where good people want to work and can work without "distractions" (using the word very broadly and generically, not dismissing people's important concerns!!!). So it's in their self interest to deal with them well. This line of argument isn't that different from the GP's analogy to site uptime.
astura 8y ago
The point of a company investigation is to investigate violations of company policies; law enforcement doesn't get involved in determining if company policies were violated, it's simply not in their purview. If during an investigation they find criminal behavior they can (and usually should) turn over their evidence to law enforcement and let them do their job, which is investigating violations of criminal law. Violations of company policies and violations of criminal law have huge differences in burden of proof. People sometimes confuse the two and say things like "they should have never been punished at work because they weren't convicted in a court of law." But that's not exactly how it works, the burden of proof for work punishment is simply a large magnitude lower than legal punishment. Most workplace harassment is not criminal. Most violations of company policy aren't criminal.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Something Ive never understood (not in the sense of I dont agree. What I really mean is I'm uneducated on the topic and would like to find out more, but my searches returned little, since it's a pretty heated topic), is why the company should be the primary responsible entity for this. Because sexual harassment is a form of illegal sex-based employment discrimination by the company. Individual unwelcome acts that don't rise to that level aren't sexual harassment (legally), but may be warning signs that if not corrected rise to the level of an offense by the company. > Maybe for light cases where someone just need a stern talking to, but a lot of the cases are downright criminal acts. And for those, the company’s responsibility as regards harassment does not negate the role of law enforcement as regards the criminal violation. The police are not pushed aside in favor or private action. In addition, harassment events, whether or not a crime is involved, can be directly reported to federal, or usually also state (who will dual-file with the federal EEOC), anti-discrimination authorities; the employer process mostly if a mechanism to catch conduct before it reaches the level of discrimination and to manage the company's exposure when it did reach that level. > Shouldn't it be better to have law enforcement handle it, and have companies forced to cooperate instead? That's not an “instead” or “better”, because the options aren't mutually exclusive; where a criminal accusation is involved,law enforcement retains their usual role in investigating and prosecuting crimes, including compulsory process which can be directed at parties with relevant information, including employers.

by shados 8y ago

kiliantics 8y ago

As you point out, the cops are often useless too. Now imagine you call the cops on your boss and they show up to talk with him/her. How might your boss be treating you after this?

kazagistar 8y ago
The same is true for HR; that's why there is additional rles around retaliation.

notyourwork 8y ago

Sadly the police don’t have the resources to go “investigate” every time someone said let’s settle this outside. Where do you drawn the line for stern talking and police investigation. Your idea sounds good in theory but in practice doesn’t work.

jamiegreen 8y ago
>Sadly *Thankfully
- notyourwork 8y ago
  You're probably more correct, I was trying to empathize with OP but I do agree I don't think the police are the right party for this mediation.
  - belorn 8y ago
    What if we created a new government organization to fill where we find that the police is not the right party to address illegal behavior. We could call them peace officer which mediate in disputes with power to fire and discipline people with the exact same requirement and behavior that we want out of the perfect HR department. This way we would raise the standard to be equal for all people that are employed regardless of company.
    - notyourwork 8y ago
      Civil court?

gnode 8y ago

In these situations, companies aren't sued for harassment, but for having a hostile work environment; allowing harassment to persist (e.g. by retaining harassing employees). If an employer has effective mechanisms to deal with cases of harassment, then it shouldn't be liable. Even if a harasser was prosecuted or sued successfully, if the company retained them, that would create a hostile work environment for the harassee, and make the employer liable. There's also the case of quid pro quo harassment, where a superior makes someone's career progression tied to the harassment, in which case it may be harder to distinguish the company's liability from the harasser. But even in such cases, an effective system to report such behaviour can mitigate the company's liability. In such cases, claims often surround retaliation for reporting harassment (e.g. employee transferred, demoted or fired in response to a harassment report.)

Bartweiss 8y ago
I'm surprised at how many other responses here are saying "because the police don't have the resources to investigate" and similar. This reply gets to the more fundamental point: companies are doing a different thing than police investigations or even civil suits over harassment. They can't undo the harassment, they can't punish the harasser (beyond termination with cause), or force the harasser to compensate their victim. Rather, the goal is to create a workplace where employees are not harassed. This is good for both legal reasons (hostile work environment suits) and obvious moral (harassment is bad) and practical (people will quit) reasons. If a coworker mocked or punched me every day at work, it might or might not produce a complaint to the police or a civil suit against the coworker. But it would certainly be something that made my employment untenable and a reasonable employer would react to that. People are in general not demanding that employers act in place of the police, they're demanding that they act to stop sex-related hostility at least as thoroughly as they would act against other hostility. It's the purview of the company because it's a completely different task than what courts or police would do.

jib 8y ago

The police are not primarily there to solve civil disputes and disagreements. There is a pretty wide area where things are not illegal and possible to convict, but you would probably want to do something. The police’s mindset (at least the ones I’ve interacted with) is one of three things: 1. Deterrance from crimes to be committed (doesn’t apply here) 2. Achieve convictions for crimes (would also not apply in your situation) 3. Deploy force to break up ongoing altercations (also doesn’t apply) 2 is interesting. Talk about a specific alleged crime with a police officer and they will not be discussing whether it was a crime or not much, nor if the person committed it, they will be discussing whether it can be proven in a court of law or not that a criminal act was committed by a specific person, beyond reasonable doubt. It is a purely pragmatic operation of “how can I provide proof that something occurred that is against this list of rules”. The police are in no way useless, most people just misunderstand what their job is. Their job is not to dispense justice, or make sure you get your revenge. In your specific situation it sucked, but from a police point of view what would they do? Is there a crime? Maybe. Would they be able to present a chain of evidence proving beyond reasonable doubt that a crime occurred - most assuredly not. Would a conviction, however unlikely, achieve something meaningful? Nope, the guy would get a fine at most, but would still be working with you. On the other hand, an employer is fully within their right to fire someone for a situation like that. They do not have the same burden of proof, they can refer to previous records of incidents, and the consequences would better match what you’d want (removal of the hostile environment).

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
gambler 8y ago
>Their job is not to dispense justice, or make sure you get your revenge. This shouldn't be the job of HR either. What you describe is what civil courts are for. From societal perspective, it is their exact purpose: to dispense justice and prevent revenge. If they don't work, they need to be made to work, instead of relegating this function to random people with random training and random incentives following random policies that are ultimately designed to safeguard companies, not employees.

dkarl 8y ago

The reason is that the bar is simply too low. Or rather, the bar for taking legal action is so high that it would not in a million years create an acceptable work environment at Google. Think about it from another perspective. If Google wants to cherry-pick the brightest and best educated people from society, they're going to have to meet a higher standard themselves. Would you want that standard encoded in law for the rest of the state? If so, how would you, in a democracy, impose a standard crafted by a subset of the cultural elite for themselves on the rest of the state or the country? Changing cultural norms drag the law behind them, not the other way around. The legal standard will lag behind for a long time, and Google's employees are part of the force that will be leading it forward.

HillaryBriss 8y ago

> I ended up having to quit. wow. that sounds like a really bad situation. i mean, did you quit because of an ongoing threat of violence from this individual? the company should have offered other remedies before it came to that.

gumby 8y ago

> ...why the company should be the primary responsible entity for this...Having a private entity that has a vested interest in the events seem...unwise. All other issues aside: the company should want to make an environment where good people want to work and can work without "distractions" (using the word very broadly and generically, not dismissing people's important concerns!!!). So it's in their self interest to deal with them well. This line of argument isn't that different from the GP's analogy to site uptime.

astura 8y ago

The point of a company investigation is to investigate violations of company policies; law enforcement doesn't get involved in determining if company policies were violated, it's simply not in their purview. If during an investigation they find criminal behavior they can (and usually should) turn over their evidence to law enforcement and let them do their job, which is investigating violations of criminal law. Violations of company policies and violations of criminal law have huge differences in burden of proof. People sometimes confuse the two and say things like "they should have never been punished at work because they weren't convicted in a court of law." But that's not exactly how it works, the burden of proof for work punishment is simply a large magnitude lower than legal punishment. Most workplace harassment is not criminal. Most violations of company policy aren't criminal.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> Something Ive never understood (not in the sense of I dont agree. What I really mean is I'm uneducated on the topic and would like to find out more, but my searches returned little, since it's a pretty heated topic), is why the company should be the primary responsible entity for this. Because sexual harassment is a form of illegal sex-based employment discrimination by the company. Individual unwelcome acts that don't rise to that level aren't sexual harassment (legally), but may be warning signs that if not corrected rise to the level of an offense by the company. > Maybe for light cases where someone just need a stern talking to, but a lot of the cases are downright criminal acts. And for those, the company’s responsibility as regards harassment does not negate the role of law enforcement as regards the criminal violation. The police are not pushed aside in favor or private action. In addition, harassment events, whether or not a crime is involved, can be directly reported to federal, or usually also state (who will dual-file with the federal EEOC), anti-discrimination authorities; the employer process mostly if a mechanism to catch conduct before it reaches the level of discrimination and to manage the company's exposure when it did reach that level. > Shouldn't it be better to have law enforcement handle it, and have companies forced to cooperate instead? That's not an “instead” or “better”, because the options aren't mutually exclusive; where a criminal accusation is involved,law enforcement retains their usual role in investigating and prosecuting crimes, including compulsory process which can be directed at parties with relevant information, including employers.