- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Here’s the entire thing if you don’t want to go to that link:
There were a series of accusations about our company last August from a former employee. Immediately following these accusations, LMG hired Roper Greyell - a large Vancouver-based law firm specializing in labor and employment law, to conduct a third-party investigation. Their website describes them as “one of the largest employment and labour law firms in Western Canada.” They work with both private and public sector employers.
To ensure a fair investigation, LMG did not comment or publicly release any data and asked our team members to do the same. Now that the investigation is complete, we’re able to provide a summary of the findings.
The investigation found that:
Claims of bullying and harassment were not substantiated.
Allegations that sexual harassment were ignored or not addressed were false.
Any concerns that were raised were investigated. Furthermore, from reviewing our history, the investigator is confident that if any other concerns had been raised, we would have investigated them.
There was no evidence of “abuse of power” or retaliation. The individual involved may not have agreed with our decisions or performance feedback, but our actions were for legitimate work-related purposes, and our business reasons were valid.
Allegations of process errors and miscommunication while onboarding this individual were partially substantiated, but the investigator found ample documentary evidence of LMG working to rectify the errors and the individual being treated generously and respectfully. When they had questions, they were responded to and addressed.
In summary, as confirmed by the investigation, the allegations made against the team were largely unfounded, misleading, and unfair.
With all of that said, in the spirit of ongoing improvement, the investigator shared their general recommendation that fast-growing workplaces should invest in continuing professional development. The investigator encouraged us to provide further training to our team about how to raise concerns to reinforce our existing workplace policies.
Prior to receiving this report, LMG solicited anonymous feedback from the team in an effort to ensure there was no unreported bullying and harassment and hosted a training session which reiterated our workplace policies and reinforced our reporting structure. LMG will continue to assess ongoing continuing education for our team.
At this time, we feel our case for a defamation suit would be very strong; however, our deepest wish is to simply put all of this behind us. We hope that will be the case, given the investigator’s clear findings that the allegations made online were misrepresentations of what actually occurred. We will continue to assess if there is persistent reputational damage or further defamation.
This doesn’t mean our company is perfect and our journey is over. We are continuously learning and trying to do better. Thank you all for being part of our community.
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Hahahahahhaha
Furthermore, from reviewing our history, the investigator is confident that if any other concerns had been raised, we would have investigated them.
Can you make it look like even more of a joke? (outside of Russia, they are King, of course)
I’m astounded the investigator they hired found them innocent.
Ah yes… They hired a third-party respected law firm specializing in labor and employment law, and allowed full access to records and employees to investigate the allegations. They took months to complete that investigation thoroughly and provide a report on the findings and recommendations going forwards.
Because the results aren’t what you personally wanted, you attack the entire idea that an investigation paid for by LMG must inherently be biased in their favor because they paid for it.
So what alternative would you suggest? They already hired a respected third party law firm specializing in this. Since you seem to think you know of a better way to investigate in a more unbiased manner.
Not the original commenter… but an investigation paid for by a company is not the same as an investigation by somebody who is incentivized to work for the aggreived.
There is no report, just a statement that is poorly written yet again. A few paragraphs on X written by them isn’t a report refuting the allegations. It’s another “Trust me Bro” statement.
Assuming you aren’t trolling; LMG:
- Hired a professional HR firm
- Gave them access to their internal records and communications
- Gave them free reign to talk to whoever they need
- Tasked them to work out what happened, and provide them with instructions to improve their processes
If that isn’t the right thing to do, then what is?
Isn’t the classic phrase that HR is not your friend? They are there to manage you as a resource and to protect the bottom line.
They said at the time “We are committed to publishing the findings”. This has not happened yet as far as I know, and it’s critical. Accusations were specific, the investigation findings can’t be vague.
I guess people just wanna be mad with him I mean what I think what they want is that they would find that the company was actually at fault and they actually did something wrong and then I guess someone gets fired. I think it’s what they wanted to hear, but honestly, this is the best outcome . 
Cool. Release the report.
You can’t investigate employee abuse allegations months after the fact, everything there is circumstantial and proving anything after the fact is near impossible.
This was obviously an act done to cover the business. I’m not saying they are wrong to do so. I’m just saying that anyone expected any other outcome isn’t living in reality.
It seems like people want… a volunteer (no money involved) who has never heard of LMG (unbiased) to interview people without permission (LMG wouldn’t know about the investigation and couldn’t prepare), access information and then release all of it. Remember to include finger prints of everyone interviewed in case the statement are falsified.
I’m exaggerating here but it looks like no matter what they do, someone will have a problem with it.
Like… investigators were paid to… investigate. They’re not gonna get paid more for not finding anything or gonna refund the money if they do. 100% they have this in their contract
But it’s also going to reduce their chances of getting hired for this kind of work.
Sponsored investigations cannot be impartial unless the investigator is blinded with respect to who hired them.
On the other hand, if an investigator is found out to do bad investigations, their credibility gets lost. Some corporations likely would choose them for exactly that reason, but most won’t, so there’s some incentive to do a proper job.
Given I don’t know of bad rumors about this corporation, I’d go with @ashok36@lemmy.world’s take that the following statement was written by a lawyer and thus sexual harassment did happen but was addressed.
Allegations that sexual harassment were ignored or not addressed were false.
Given that this issue was made public, it wasn’t addressed well enough for at least some parties involved. Hopefully harassment won’t be an issue going forward.
One big question I’m wondering is if that company they hired to investigate themselves ever finds a company they’ve been hired to investigate (by that company) is in the wrong or if they are basically a PR company disguised as an investigation company.
It sucks that LTT is in this position because I acknowledge that it looks the same whether or not they are innocent, but it’s so hard to trust that these things are done in good faith when it’s likely more profitable to do it in bad faith.
I know a lawyer at Roper-Greyell. The firm specializes in defending/protecting companies around employment law. They probably also consult on best practices for companies to avoid suits.
They are a law firm, but they are LMG’s law firm. Note that we’re reading what LMG wants to share about the report, not the report itself.
It’s a legal strategy to say, “Investigators didn’t find anything seriously wrong, and we’re considering suing you for defamation”
A lot of the other replies to your comment read between the lines in some insightful ways. I would just like to also add that “claims of bullying and harassment were not substantiated” means that the investigation didn’t find evidence. Not that the bullying/ harassment didn’t occur. It is kind of meaningless without knowing what information was looked at. What sorts of substantiation could reasonably be expected from the investigation?
It’s possible that the person making allegations has evidence that the investigators didn’t.
LTT sold someone else’s property (prototype even, after failing to review it correctly). I doubt they are innocent.
Not here to defend the multi-milion dollar company, but how can you connect selling someone else’s stuff (which can be described by either extreme greed or a genuine mistake caused by dishorganization) and things like bullying and sexual harassment, which is not not even explainable by greed, only by being evil.
Like, they are not even comparable, it’s like saying that one accused of murder is convicted because they once didn’t pay their taxes.
The other reply to me already sums it up pretty good. All Linus does is centered around him. Pretty much exactly what you would expect from someone who does the things they are accused of here. Of course that is not enough to convict anyone, but far more easily makes me believe such things.
Yeah, the way they handled that was IMO criminally negligent, assuming it wasn’t a deliberate attempt to sabotage that company. But it doesn’t imply anything about the sexual harassment issue.
Though their initial handling of that situation going viral is exactly why I’m skeptical about the integrity of this investigation. Each step Linus took just screamed: “we’ll just say what we think we need to say to make this problem go away” plus a dose of “I’ll apologize but also I still think I was right”. But he also saw just how badly all of that went. So it would be in character for the investigation to be just another version of this, but it would also make sense for him to have realized that a fake investigation would make things worse and that his only real way out was to let go of his fate and leave it to a legitimate investigation.
But both of those cases look the same from here so idk.
Allegations that sexual harassment were ignored or not addressed were false.
The only way to read this, assuming the lawyers wrote the statement, is that sexual harassment did happen but was “addressed”. Otherwise they’d just say the claims of sexual harassment were unsubstantiated.
I’d like to know more about how those claims were addressed before making final judgement.
Correction, the only way to read this is that allegations happened, and said allegations were not ignored, but investigated. The statement doesn’t tell us wether those allegations were found to have merit.
That’s not the only way to read that at all. Your interpretation is that sexual harrassment was not ignored & was addressed; but the sentence is actually that allegations were not ignored and were addressed.
That’s fair, I suppose, but awfully ambiguous. It would be better if they just said, “Allegations of sexual harassment were found to be unsubstantiated” or similar if that’s actually the case.
That is something they may not be allowed to say for legal reasons, especially if other investgations are going on.
