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Editor’s Observe: Of their remaining Worker Expertise column for 2023, HR Dive reporter Caroline Colvin does a temperature verify on worker expertise below Elon Musk, from each a compliance and tradition standpoint.
Together with billionaire bravado, Elon Musk is now synonymous with “poisonous office.”
Let’s verify the scoreboard, beginning with 2022: Information broke in Could that Musk allegedly subjected a SpaceX flight attendant to overt sexual harassment in 2016; the settlement paperwork point out that when the flight attendant refused, Musk seemingly retaliated towards her by lowering her shifts.
The groundswell dialog round this information prompted SpaceX employees to pen an open letter in June 2022, reportedly delivered to President Gwynne Shotwell. “[Musk’s] habits within the public sphere is a frequent supply of distraction and embarrassment for us, notably in latest weeks,” the letter said.
On the time, an knowledgeable who spoke to HR Dive affirmed the concept this kind of conduct by a enterprise chief is greater than distracting for workers throughout Musk’s corporations; it additionally erodes psychological security.
Then got here the $44 billion takeover of X, previously referred to as Twitter, in October 2022. That acquisition began with a bang when Musk considerably diminished headcount. The triple employer fired high executives, laid off virtually 4,000 employees (about half of the workers on the time), and jettisoned remaining dissenters. After expertise within the compliance, content material moderation and cybersecurity division packed their baggage, November 2022 was marked by X employees quitting in droves after Musk issued an ultimatum: Turn into “extraordinarily hardcore” or go away.
If 2022 laid the groundwork for that notion, issues solely ramped up in 2023. On the high of the yr, X grew to become the form of office the place press emails had been fielded with an automated poop emoji response.
Across the similar time, Musk went backwards and forwards with Haraldur Thorleifsson, an worker who was not sure of whether or not he was laid off by X; after virtually per week and a half with no correspondence with administration, Thorleifsson tweeted Musk asking if he was nonetheless employed. Thorleifsson’s former boss derided him about his incapacity and his want for lodging (the employee makes use of a wheelchair because of muscular dystrophy).
Whereas Musk publicly apologized for the change, the debacle grew to become one more installment within the longstanding notion of Musk’s corporations as poisonous workplaces.
In spring 2023, X rolled again its coverage towards deadnaming transgender individuals. Whereas this coverage is customer-facing, it’s laborious to think about an organization doing so whereas additionally championing trans workers; individuals consultants have spoken to HR Dive up to now concerning the best way misgendering and deadnaming trans expertise will be dangerous to office tradition.
Simply final month, the tech entrepreneur grew to become one of many solely main employers in latest reminiscence that has felt comfy hurling expletives at enterprise companions in a really public manner. Musk threatened “thermonuclear” lawsuits towards media evaluation entities — notably people who referred to as out advertisers with antisemitic and White supremacist views on X — whereas going through lawsuits of his personal.
U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee probes apart, the U.S. Equal Employment Alternative Fee sued Tesla in September 2023, placing forth allegations of a racist office — one which meted out retaliation towards Black employees who spoke up.
And whereas X might now have content material for employers — X Hiring, what Musk calls a possible LinkedIn rival, simply grew to become obtainable to all customers in November — one can by no means maintain a glimmering opinion of Musk as an employer for too lengthy.
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