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Comment by rdlecler1 | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone seen a policy on how to handle sexual harassment allegations in the work place? If it comes down to 'he says she says' do you fire someone even though you don't have evidence? Similarly, if you don't fire someone and new allegations come up later then it makes the employer look like they are an enabler.

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A witness statement is evidence. Evidence isn't only things you can touch. A photograph isn't any more evidence than a witness statement is. A photograph isn't inherently more credible than a witness statement. You should consider the credibility of each piece of evidence regardless of what type of evidence it is.

A statement made by a trustworthy employee should be taken seriously, "he said she said" is not a valid excuse to not make hard decisions.

Sure but if it is denied by the other employee, you've got directly contradicting evidence. That's what "he said she said" is.

I suppose the right word is "hard evidence." And yes I would say a photograph is, in general, more credible than a witness statement.

I say this as someone who just went through a long trial (representing myself, while the other side had an attorney), with a lot of "he said she said", and where a tape recording (of a violent attack on me) and photographs (of bruises) made all the difference.

Recently the cases that have hit the news, have rarely been borderline grey areas.

If someone comes forward it is because they are being serially harassed, have documentation to back it up, and there are multiple other people who have also been victims.

He said she said situations will likely result in a warning or no action at all.

That's why I'd recommend people make recordings. The tough thing is, in California, it is illegal to record unless you have their permission, or if it is a felony in progress. (which it was in my case)

"he said she said" is a third party statement. For example, "Bobby was talking to Veronica and he said she said that she doesn't like you."

That is not what "he said, she said" means.

Witness testimony is the weakest form of evidence. It's foundationally unempirical.

IANAL, but: If you take the accusations seriously, gather evidence, and properly investigate them, you are unlikely to be sued.

If it comes down to he said, she said, contact a lawyer.

Policy: contact an attorney

> If it comes down to 'he says she says' do you fire someone even though you don't have evidence?

If an employee of yours said they were raped by another employee, would you make them go to the hospital and get a rape kit before believing what they said?

If an employee of yours said they got mugged and lost their laptop, would you demand security camera footage before replacing it?

You should default to trusting your employees. You hired them! They are invested in the company, potentially with equity! Especially in at-will employment agreements, I think this should be much closer to "Management reserves the right to let go of anyone at any time for any reason" than the criminal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt."

If you don't do any validation, this will be noticed and you will encourage false reports as a means of settling unrelated personal scores.

That management reserves the right to dismiss for any reason doesn't mean that dismissing based on bare unconfirmed complaints is reasonable, either morally or from a business perspective.

Where are you working that you can reasonably imagine this happening? The risks of someone making this claim are so, so high, yet you believe someone would do this just to 'settle unrelated personal scores'?

> Where are you working that you can reasonably imagine this happening?

I'm working at a place where I can't imagine this happening because they, while taking harassment complaints very seriously, also take personnel actions very seriously and investigate before imposing permanent consequences, using other means to prevent furthering a problem during the investigation.

> The risks of someone making this claim are so, so high

If the company establishes a practice of firing without investigation, and the events are hard to disprove in a way which would sustain a defamation complaint by the falsely accused, the risks are near zero.

http://www.thenewstribune.com/sports/article158124954.html

Duke lacrosse. UVA. Conor Oberst.

It happens. Allegations deserve investigation before punishment is doled out. Just because SV is doing an absolutely awful job at dealing with sexual harassment right now doesn't mean we need to swing hard the other direction and punish without proof.

You'd think we wouldn't need a security camera in our break room to stop people from stealing other people's food, but we do. People do all sorts of petty crap. If you expect rational behavior, you're going to be disappointed.

I envy that. I eat out or hide my food just because they won't put a camera in ours. Too much stuff stolen. I did get a thief once by putting a special ingredient in it then leaving it clearly marked with large letters and warning. They probably thought, "Screw him. He can't prove nothing." Jokes on him. :)

Just did it once, though. I put a lot of effort into avoiding harming innocent people. The bar is getting lower and people are often tired so someone might grab it thinking it was a sample or something. Just too tired to be smart or something. So, continuing to avoid the fridge except looking for any freebies company provides. :)

"Where are you working that you can reasonably imagine this happening?"

It's happened a bunch of times at my company just that I've seen personally. I'm not even talking the ones that did it to me. It's a "reputable," Fortune 100 company with diverse staff and plenty of turnover currently due to management. My part of it has maybe 100 people or so. There were also real cases of sexual harassment male-on-female and female-on-male mostly resolved by employees themselves without escalation. Younger people just being stupid with some coaching and strict warning. Those that were a bigger problem, such as smacking asses or continued harassment, get escalated to management who investigates them, gets witness testimony, and fires them if witness or camera confirmation is strong. I helped get rid of a long-timer recently where you hear stories with no evidence. He got transfered to a shitty job with more people around due to poor work ethic. This time, there were 2-3 witnesses to his behavior that escalated in his irritation and we got rid of him immediately.

So, it happens both ways in my company. The thousands of women I've talked to from tons of companies also told me both happen: sexual harassment; people using fake claims including sexual harassment as a tool. We call it the "he said, she said bullshit." Fortunately, my bosses cultivated a good team where we deal with little to none of that stuff. I mainly hear it from others acting as a witness for them or developing strategy for trouble-makers on occasion.

> "If an employee of yours said they were raped by another employee, would you make them go to the hospital and get a rape kit before believing what they said?"

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your sentence, but are you advocating that you should fire the accused employee right away with no evidence other than the word of the accuser?

I totally agree with what you are saying as far as trusting your employees, but your examples are a little different; a better example would be "If an employee of yours says that another employee stole their laptop, would you demand security camera footage before firing the other employee?"

I think the key thing to do, as a manager, is to start by beliving the employee making the complaint. Don't tell them things like "Oh, you must have misinterpreted" or "was it really that bad" or "I am sure he didn't mean it".

You tell them you take their complain very seriously, that you are so sorry this happened to them, and that you will take action immediately. Then, you investigate. Shockingly, lots of harassers won't outright deny it if you ask them about specific behavior (don't come out and ask them if they sexually harassed, but ask them if they, for example, said these specific words that they are accused of saying); they won't lie because they don't think what they did was actually harassment, they think they were just flirting or being fun. You then take action, whether you need to fire the person, reprimand them, transfer them, demote them, etc.

> If an employee of yours said they were raped by another employee, would you make them go to the hospital and get a rape kit before believing what they said?

And if the other employee said they didn't commit the rape, you should presumably believe them by default as well, right?

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