Hiring Hypothetical involving Nazis

What would you do in the OP?


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downtown

Crafternoon Delight
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Since we've been talking about this sort of thing a lot lately...this is a scenario loosely based of something a friend of mine experienced. For the purpose of this hypothetical, feel free to ignore what any local HR or anti-discriminatory laws in your jurisdiction say. I am interested in what you personally would recommend doing in this situation.

You're a mid-sized company with over 100 employees. You hired a back-end IT person a few years ago, who has performed fairly well...not a superstar, but not a bad employee. He mostly keeps to himself.

Later, you learn that this individual has ties to the White Power movement, and contributed large sums of money and time to David Duke, a former KKK Grand Wizard who was also an elected official in Louisiana. While not a spokesperson for any organization, this person is unquestionably a racist, and could, potentially, be photographed or otherwise pubicaly outed as a somebody in say, an American Nazi type party. If this happened, it would be an embarrassment for the company.

So far, this individual has not ever worked on a project or team with a non-white male. However, your firm has several jewish and minority employees, and at some point in the near future, this employee may be either asked to supervise or report to one.

What would you do? Would you keep the status quo, and partner him with say, a Jewish underling if business needs dictated that in two years, hoping that it doesn't become an incident or that he doesn't embarrass the firm? Would you keep him and try to prevent him from ever working in a situation where he'd need to supervise or report to a minority? Would you fire him as a preventive (or philosophical) measure? At THIS POINT, he hasn't done anything Nazi-ish at work.

Forget the law and the rules. What would you want to do? Poll coming.
 
If you have a hundred employees there is a fairly high chance that some of them could be an embarrassment. At least you know what his peculiarity is so you can monitor him and choose who he works with.
 
Tricky stuff.
You dont say what you think of him? My personal impresion of the guy in such a situation would mean everything..
 
Many people are quite capable of separating private views and beliefs from their public lives (including the work environment). First thing I would do would be to talk to them about it. I would explain that I had come to learn of his beliefs, and that as they are something that gives rise to concerns about his relations with other associates, I felt it necessary to reiterate our company's policy about employee relations and hostile-free work environments. I know that many people, perhaps most people, hold political or religious views of various stripes that other people may find offensive if they knew about them, and nonetheless everyday conflicts between these people do not happen for just that reason. I would express my confidence that such would remain the case in the future, were he to come into working contact with any number of persons in our company with such beliefs or origins that he might find objectionable, and that professional demeanor would be reciprocated at all times.

Until he says or does something objectionable or offensive, he's just another employee with politics people don't like. As long as he keeps it to himself and doesn't associate his beliefs outside of work with our company (like attending a rally in uniform or something), he's not a problem. That even goes for being "outed" by one of those creeper watchdog groups that tracks down people's personal lives and "exposes" them "for what they are" and generally harasses people: I would not fire him if such a thing happened.
 
I'd keep him until he actually does something that causes problems, either from a company PR POV or from causing issues with other employees. Causing issues does not include other employees not liking him for his views if they find out about them.
 
I'd jew it up with some of my he-bros at his cubicle while chomping on some matzah and see what happens. :mischief:



Seriously, though, I agree with Cheezy. If he keeps his private life and politics private, and is able to work with his coworkers, then it wouldn't be right to fire him just because you have a beef with his politics. Any sort of tirades or threats against his fellow employees would be a cause for action.
 
Tough one. Since his activities have not affected the company at all (yet) there's no official reason to "know about" them. I would certainly have a very negative view of that person. But I don't know that I would be justified in moving preemptively to fire him. I would not make any special efforts to keep him away from Jews or other minorities. In fact I might arrange that he did have to deal with them, just to see if he could keep a professional lid on his beliefs. If he can't, then that's grounds for firing. If he can, then it's pretty hard to justify it. The guy would be out of the line for promotions, and tend to get the crappier assignments to see if he could be encouraged to leave on his own.
 
It totally depends on what sort of job he is doing and what sort of company this is.

If this is for example a programming job and there are no interactions with outside clients or anything of that nature, and if he hasn't done anything improper at work, then what he does outside of the job is his business and not relevant at all.

If he's in a position where he interacts with the outside world and represents the company to some degree, then this would definitely be an issue. However, let his performance speak for itself. If he hasn't broken any rules at work or done anything illegal while on the clock, then I wouldn't fire him. For all we know he is 100% able to separate his white supremacy beliefs with his work ethic.

So yeah, let his work speak for itself. If he isn't breaking any rules and there are no grounds for dismissal, then don't let him go.
 
I'd keep him until he actually does something that causes problems, either from a company PR POV or from causing issues with other employees.

True.

Causing issues does not include other employees not liking him for his views if they find out about them.

Exactly. The second he brings his racist garbage to work with him he's gone in a flash, but if he's just a backroom guy nobody sees I'd see no compelling reason to fire him.

Other employees would also have to leave him be if he didn't provoke them. If he started talking about other people at work online and I found it I would also fire him ( if I could ) for that.

Bottom line is that if he respects the separation between work and personal time then so will I, but the separation has to be complete and go both ways.
 
I go with Cheezy. I get the feeling many HR professionals might be somewhat more Machiavellian in practice.
 
Many people are quite capable of separating private views and beliefs from their public lives (including the work environment). First thing I would do would be to talk to them about it. I would explain that I had come to learn of his beliefs, and that as they are something that gives rise to concerns about his relations with other associates, I felt it necessary to reiterate our company's policy about employee relations and hostile-free work environments. I know that many people, perhaps most people, hold political or religious views of various stripes that other people may find offensive if they knew about them, and nonetheless everyday conflicts between these people do not happen for just that reason. I would express my confidence that such would remain the case in the future, were he to come into working contact with any number of persons in our company with such beliefs or origins that he might find objectionable, and that professional demeanor would be reciprocated at all times.

Until he says or does something objectionable or offensive, he's just another employee with politics people don't like. As long as he keeps it to himself and doesn't associate his beliefs outside of work with our company (like attending a rally in uniform or something), he's not a problem. That even goes for being "outed" by one of those creeper watchdog groups that tracks down people's personal lives and "exposes" them "for what they are" and generally harasses people: I would not fire him if such a thing happened.

I don't say this very often but... I agree with every word.

Until he actually does something objectionable, it's not anybody's business. If he can keep his politics to himself, he's just another worker. If he starts preaching about the impending great racial war, then fire him.
 
I go with Cheezy.
This, but I'd probably wait to have the discussion about the company policies until I witnessed something that could have been influenced by his views and may be in conflict with the company views.

Just to make an argument of my point - you wouldn't lecture a Muslim or a Christian employee about treating women as equals before you took notice of something. It may harm more than do good...
 
This, but I'd probably wait to have the discussion about the company policies until I witnessed something that could have been influenced by his views and may be in conflict with the company views.

Just to make an argument of my point - you wouldn't lecture a Muslim or a Christian employee about treating women as equals before you took notice of something. It may harm more than do good...

Conversation might not go that in-depth. Could be as simple as "hey, noticed some stuff in your personal life(explain how you aren't stalking him) that coworkers might find offensive. You've been doing a good job of keeping that separate from your professional life here. That's fine, just a friendly reminder that it needs to stay that way."
 
Forget law and rules? Well I'd purge him and any other employees I didn't like. I mean why not?
 
Conversation might not go that in-depth. Could be as simple as "hey, noticed some stuff in your personal life that coworkers might find offensive. You've been doing a good job of keeping that separate from your professional life here. That's fine, just a friendly reminder that it needs to stay that way."
True, but what you said will be translated to - 'I've been snooping around about you and heard some gossip about your personal life. You've got offensive views that we don't care for. We'll be keeping a close eye on you from now on. Good luck!'
 
Forget law and rules? Well I'd purge him and any other employees I didn't like. I mean why not?

The law is all that would stay your hand in such a case?

I guess I would be held back by a respect for individualism. I certainly wouldn't admire this individual, fwiw, and I would find it hard to go out of my way for them.

Individualism is an ugly beast and has very few defenders when push comes to shove.
 
True, but what you said will be translated to - 'I've been snooping around about you and heard some gossip about your personal life. You've got offensive views that we don't care for. We'll be keeping a close eye on you from now on. Good luck!'

You're right, it could. Depending on who that is it could be taken badly, or actually, it might be taken well. You never know.
 
Just to make an argument of my point - you wouldn't lecture a Muslim or a Christian employee about treating women as equals before you took notice of something. It may harm more than do good...

The only reason that I decided to pre-emptively speak with him about it is that his ideology is one that is directly offensive toward a certain group; his attitudes toward that group are not incidental because of his beliefs, they are his beliefs. Otherwise, in a case like you mention (religion or something), until those beliefs manifest themselves in actions directly affecting the company or our customers or people we interact with, they are not a cause for action. But in his case I think differently.
 
The law is all that would stay your hand in such a case?

I guess I would be held back by a respect for individualism. I certainly wouldn't admire this individual, fwiw, and I would find it hard to go out of my way for them.

Individualism is an ugly beast and has very few defenders when push comes to shove.

If I'm an employer of a company of 100+ I don't see why I should pay any regard to that.
 
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