Hey y'all, a ton of you have been asking about an update to my meeting with HR, the COO, my boss, and coworker, apologies I'm late. This weekend and yesterday was mentally draining.
I don't have much to report back unfortunately. The meeting lasted 15 minutes and was extremely tense, but nothing of interest really happened. HR started the meeting by asking why we posted and commented on the article, to which we explained that it was a timely post to share given the mandate. We typically use that Slack channel to share relevant industry news, so this was not out of the ordinary. I asked what exactly was considered disrespectful and HR told me it was the timing of events. My coworker and I asked for a list of what was allowed to be discussed in a public forum, but we did not get a straight answer. We also asked why the COO and our boss were looped in – this could have been handled with just HR if her feelings were hurt. She told us she wanted everyone to be “in the loop” to which I pushed back and said it felt like an intimidation tactic to keep people from speaking up, especially since we were not given a forum to speak up. HR responded that we should have given our feedback directly to management. (I strongly disagree with this answer and believe they don't want employees openly sharing their disdain because it takes away from leadership's power, but I digress.)
The COO took HR's side, but my boss took our side, which was honestly really refreshing. Shoutout to kickass managers who see through corporate BS. My trust is totally broken by leadership though, and word is spreading about this wild meeting. I hope my coworkers do the same and find a company that respects them. I wasn't fired, sorry to disappoint. 🙂
Managers are working to get people's feedback to present to leadership to show them how unhappy people are with the messaging of the mandate, but I think the company royally messed up by handling the mandate this way. I don't believe they will listen to any feedback based on how they handled this.
Another coworker shared a survey to let people give their feedback and the message was promptly deleted and he is now in trouble, presumably with the same people I got in trouble with.
I'll include the article that was posted and my response so you can see for yourself how disrespectful we were.
TDLR; typical HR spiel, we were not fired or asked to sign anything
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