Activision Blizzard claims show how HR can sanction toxicity

[ad_1]

News last month that the state of California was planning to take civil action against video game publisher Activision Blizzard rocked an entire industry.

The 29-page court record detailed a long list of allegations: The company “fostered a sexist culture,” the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing said, paying women less than men despite the cases where employees performed substantially similar work; assign them to lower level jobs and promote them at slower rates compared to men; pull them or force them to give up at higher frequencies than men; and subjecting them to various forms of sexual harassment.

All of these actions continued, according to the lawsuit, despite several reports to Activision Blizzard’s human resources department and senior executives, some of whom were allegedly directly involved in the harassment. “The defendants continually tolerate the quid pro quo and the hostile work environment,” one section reads. “The message is not lost on their employees.”

Workers at the company staged a walkout and formed a group, the ABK Workers Alliance, which presented a list of demands. Activision Blizzard has since announced the departure of former chairman J. Allen Brack, who has been named in the lawsuit. CEO Bobby Kotick said in a July 27 statement that the company has hired law firm WilmerHale to conduct a review of its policies and procedures.

Sources who spoke to HR Dive said that the lawsuit and subsequent actions of Blizzard’s management team portray a work environment marred by routine harassment and a human resources department that enabled that environment.

In particular, Kotick’s announcement of a review and his statement that discrimination and harassment “have no place” at Activision Blizzard are “fairly prescriptive” compared to earlier examples of organizations responding to allegations similar, according to Stephanie Bonnes, assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven.

But it’s hard to take such statements at face value, she noted, given the trial description of a “frat boy culture” allegedly perpetuated at Activision Blizzard. For example, the suit signals events such as “cube crawls”, in which male employees drank in the workplace and walked through different office cubicles in part to engage in inappropriate behavior towards female employees.

“When you have a term like ‘cube crawl’ you know it’s ritualized, it’s a ubiquitous part of the organization,” Bonnes said. “It’s not like these companies don’t have policies. Their workplace is completely organized to ignore those policies.”

An effective human resources department operating in an environment with little tolerance for harassment and discrimination can investigate and track complaints, Bonnes said. But in other organizations, human resources themselves can enable and protect stalkers while systematically removing victims from the organization or ensuring that they quit.

Activision Blizzard’s response to the lawsuit appears to be driven by external pressures, according to Rosalind Chow, associate professor of organizational behavior and theory at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. Research suggests this could limit the extent of changes made in the future, she said; “It won’t be a cultural change, they are going to do whatever it takes to stay out of the limelight.”

The decision to hire a third party to conduct an investigation can also attract criticism. In a letter published by the IGN news agency, the ABK Workers Alliance rejected the selection of WilmerHale by Activision Blizzard, citing the relationship between the company and company executives as well as the company’s previous work “discouraging workers’ rights and collective action “.

“Because the third party fees are paid by the company, they are not really an independent third party,” Chow said. “The aggrieved parties probably had no say in who this third party was.”

In addition, the lawsuit alleged that an internal review of Activision Blizzard’s human resources department determined the existence of a “great lack of trust,” with a separate note stating that the department was “not being kept in line. high esteem “. California said employee complaints were “treated superficially and dismissively and not kept confidential,” so female employees faced retaliation.

The content of the lawsuit fuels the company’s impressions that HR departments are acting primarily to represent their organizations rather than their employees, creating a chilling effect, said Amanda Armor, director of human resources at software company Versus Systems. “This is why so many people are reluctant to come forward.”

Businesses can boast of having diversity, inclusiveness, and psychologically safe workplaces, but the reality is that those statements need to be followed by action, Armor said.

This can be all the more difficult to achieve when top performing employees who engage in bad behaviors are not punished for those behaviors. “If star performers are fools and get untreated, it’s not an HR issue, it’s a leadership issue,” Chow said. “If we let people behave badly and they aren’t punished for it, it sends a message to everyone else in the organization that the behavior is good and they should do it too, or, at better, that it is tolerated. “

Activision Blizzard’s leadership was also criticized in the days following the trial when an email from Fran Townsend, executive vice president of corporate affairs, was shared on social media sites. The email denied the allegations, saying the lawsuit “presented a distorted and false picture of our business, including factually incorrect, old and out of context stories, some dating from over a decade ago.”

Among other things, this type of response is contrary to good leadership practice, said Chow; “Going in and getting on the defensive is the exact opposite of what we tell leaders to do.”

Employee response and how to move forward

Bonnes said the employee walkout is a detail that stands out in the Activision Blizzard debacle, similar to previous employee protests in response to allegations of harassment and discrimination at companies like Google. “I think it signaled that the people who were working were not going to take this treatment,” she added.

The walkout also hints at the importance of social media in today’s workplace. “Social media helps expose a lot of things,” Chow said. “There are opportunities for individuals to really exert some influence over what businesses do just by putting information into the public domain in a way that just wasn’t available to them before.”

Notably, a group of Activision Blizzard shareholders also weighed in on the company’s response, criticizing statements by executives and calling on Activision Blizzard to increase board diversity and fairness, overturn corporate decisions. ” award bonuses to executives who have engaged in abuse and undertake a company-wide equity review. , Axios reported. Engaging shareholders could help drive change within organizations, Bonnes said.

While it may be too early to say whether these developments will ultimately lead to a change at Activision Blizzard, any organization has the potential to change, Armor said. “In any movement or moment… there are a lot of ways of feeling,” she continued. “I hope there are more sincere, open and vulnerable voices than those who are simply using this as a bandwagon to show flash-in-the-pan solidarity.”

However, Armor noted that even if Activision Blizzard embarks on a cultural overhaul, it will need to stay the course when things don’t go as planned.

“Activision can become a different place if people are committed to seeing it through and maintaining that space,” she said. “They are going to have to make a choice.

[ad_2]