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.
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.