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HP CEO's Browsing History Used Against Him
theodp writes "Anything you browse can and will be used against you. An investigation of ousted HP CEO Mark Hurd's surfing history reportedly convinced the HP Board that Hurd had had a personal relationship with sexual harassment accuser Jodie Fisher, even if not sexual. Just the latest example of how HP 'work[s] together to create a culture of inclusion built on trust, respect and dignity for all.' The WSJ reported a person close to the investigation said Hurd had looked at clips from racy films featuring Ms. Fisher, a former actress, while someone 'familiar with Mr. Hurd's thinking' said he merely did a Google search of 10 minutes or so. One wonders how many more 'personal relationships' with Ms. Fisher the browser histories of HP's 304,000 worldwide employees might reveal. BTW, nice to see that Hurd has made it to HP's ex-CEO-Hall-of-Fame page."
Anyone remember their previous board spying scandal? Must be a REAL fun place to work.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
HP died with Lew Platt. Carly Fiorina was a trainwreck. The HP Way is gone and done, and has been since the first layoffs just prior to 9/11.
http://www.beanleafpress.com
Maybe he doesn't see anything wrong with it and doesn't care about your opinion?
sexual harassment is pretty serious. one would think we should be more sympathetic to jodie fisher, not hurd
I agree, sexual harassment is a very serious problem and should not be taken lightly. But could you present the evidence of sexual harassment? Larry Ellison said of it '"The H.P. board admits that it fully investigated the sexual harassment claims against Mark and found them to be utterly false." Furthermore the reason Hurd was fired appeared to be "numerous instances where [Hurd's love interest, Jodie Fisher] received compensation and/or expense reimbursement where there was not a legitimate business purpose, as well as numerous instances where inaccurate expense reports were submitted by Mark or on his behalf that intended to or had the effect of concealing Mark's personal relationship with the contractor." If that's true, misuse of company funds is also serious but not on the level of sexual harassment.
oh right, his browsing history was used against him. therefore, we should be sympathetic to him (rolls eyes)
My concern here -- and what I think the general readership thinks -- is that Hurd did some questionable things or possibly made some enemies and so they tried to dig up anything they could on them. When the sexual harassment charges didn't stick well enough, they used a company policy that everyone is guilty of: using company resources and time to google silly things or read tabloids or do things unrelated to work. "Racy" means "Mildly risque, exciting." So he visited some mildly risque sites?
Basically this looks to be a scenario where Hurd upset someone and they simply looked through his browsing history in order to find a reason to terminate him. Are they constantly searching through browsing histories of all 304,000 employees to find which employment they should terminate? No, they are not. You speak so highly of ethics regarding sexual harassment but what about the ethics of terminating the employment of just one person when he is no more guilty than thousands of other employees -- which you also have the means and option to investigate.
My work here is dung.
There's plenty of confusion about the basic definition of sexual harrassment. I've been a POSH (Prevention of Sexual Harrassment) trainer at my employer and I can tell you from hard experience - most people have no idea.
In broad strokes, then, here's what you need to know.
Most people think in terms of a "reasonable person" criteria. That's a relic of the past. When sexual harrassment first got major corp attention, the people in charge tended to apply common sense. They'd ask "Would a reasonable person consider this case to be sexual harrassment?" This seemed like a good approach and it did cover the basics. No reasonable person would disagree that "Sleep with me if you want this promotion" is harrassment.
The "reasonable person" standard, however, did not address the very wide middle ground. Are dirty jokes harrassing? If not occasionally, then how often? How many per day should be allowed? Should you be held responsible for being unintentially overheard? The "reasonable person" criteria failed to address all these at first blush.
Now, in my organization, we expected people to speak up for themselves. If someone felt harrassed and said "That makes me uncomfortable", then the person doing the harrassing action no longer had an excuse. Even if the harrasser felt that a "reasonble person" would not be harrassed by the situation, the harrasser now knew that their criteria was misused in re the person who made the complaint.
In practice, this meant that anyone could get away with anything (except the obvious aforementioned "sex for a job" situation I previously mentioned) until they were put on warning. Since it was up to the victim to issue the warning and since the victims frequently felt they were rendered powerless by the situation, warnings weren't issued. Bad manners continued to be displayed. Major harrassment incidents stopped but more subtle things that really do impact the bottom line (things like "a pervasive atmosphere of harrassment" or however you want to phrase it) continued unabated.
The "reasonable person" criteria had to be abandoned.
The new criteria is pretty simple. The victim defines the crime. If someone says something is sexual harrassment, it is.
The current situation, where *anything* is sexual harrassment if someone wants to feel they're being harrassed, results in lots of counter-intuitive weirdness. It seems crazy that if I stick up a calendar from a local sports team that has a picture of the cheerleaders on it, it's harrassment. That harrassment may not be in full flower but you better believe I'm going to be told to take it down before some super-sensitive idiot sees it and gets their feelings hurt.
As stupid as this seems, it actually works out better in practice. By "over-specifying" the defintion of sexual harrassment, the oppressive environments that were able to continue to exist under the "reasonable person" criteria are resolved. Yes, us old white men feel a bit put upon because we can't make dirty blonde jokes. But the upside is that the whole place works better and everyone can better contribute up to their potential.
Bottom line for people who don't work in big-corp type environments: the definition of "sexual harrassment" is much broader than seems reasonable. For practical reasons, learned the hard way over decades, the situation must be this way.
I don't like it. It offends my sense of justice. But I've seen it done both ways and in practice, the unreasonable, nanny-state version of sexual harrassment remediation just works better for everyone involved.
Although European (EU mainstream) countries are far from perfect in this, legal restraints make it much harder for ambulance chasers to make fortunes by publicly exaggerating allegations, and employment law means that there are proper remedies at reasonable cost which means that companies are not exposed to excessive risks from ordinary human behaviour. (I might add that we don't suffer so much from kneejerk Protestant fundamentalism, but I think that's a sideshow.)
Interestingly, when I had to do the training in the UK, our (US) trainer was quite clued up on UK law, and commented that a number of the overbearing rules that get applied in the US would be rejected by employment tribunals in the UK as unreasonable grounds for dismissal ("you guys are lucky").
Bottom line: your comments may well be correct for the US as it is, but are a sad commentary on the US legal profession and the relationships inside US companies.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
When you're working at that level (CEO at a company as big as that), then your work and personal time tend to blur. In fact, ignore "tend to" you lose all separation. People call you up with work problems all the time, you're never disconnected from your email, you spend so much time with your PA that they're as much family member as colleague. And don't even mention the travelling. So you're hardly likely to carry two laptops everywhere you go or swap from one to the other constantly.
It's easy for people here to say "shouldn't have done this through work account" but in reality it's not so simple. And the argument of misusing the company's resources is valid, but the salary and expenses (legitimate expenses) of someone in that position are so high that it would seem absurd to such a person to say they were stealing from the company. They could (and do) repay the debt by working an extra five minutes that they're supposes to. Well, except that these sorts of jobs don't come with "forty hours per week" on the contract, but the point stands. CEO of a company isn't a job, it's a lifestyle.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.