We recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Julianne Tveten of Motherboard, for her article “HR Comes Last at Startups, and Women Pay the Price.”
The article raises some important issues for startup founders and investors. In particular, as we discuss, a delay in establishing HR policies may inadvertently draw claims of harassment in the workplace.
Following is an excerpt of one of our passages:
“Usually, the wakeup call comes by way of litigation, investigation, or when the people strategy is not completely sound and investors or potential acquirers look at the operating model and it impacts their evaluation,” Schaefer said. “And that’s often way too late in the game to be focused on that.”
“It’s important to get on top of these issues early on or it’s easy to go for years out of [legal] compliance,” Michelle Capezza, an attorney who edits the blog with Schaefer, told Motherboard.