 | | Franziska Barczyk |
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"I hated the way the company treated me like I was sick." |
— Emi Nietfeld, a former Google employee |
In late 2018, Chelsey Glasson, a researcher at Google who had worked there for four years, moved to a new team. She was pregnant at the time and said she immediately felt she was being discriminated against. Her new boss suggested that her forthcoming maternity leave might "rock the boat," and she was effectively stripped of her management responsibilities. |
When she filed a complaint with human resources, she was offered 10 free sessions with a mental health counselor who was contracted by Google and available on campus. |
At the time, she thought, "What a great resource, of course I'm going to take advantage of this." |
More than a year later, when Ms. Glasson filed a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit against Google, her counselor told Ms. Glasson that she was "really nervous and uncomfortable" seeing her after Google had asked for access to records of their sessions. "She was concerned that affiliating with me would compromise her contract with Google," Ms. Glasson said. |
"That was an incredibly low, deflating moment in my experience," she said. That the counselor suggested ending their sessions as soon as Ms. Glasson had filed a lawsuit sounds like "client abandonment," said Kristi Lee, associate professor for Seattle University's counseling program, which is potentially a violation of a formal ethical code for counselors. Ms. Glasson's counselor did not respond to repeated requests for comment. |
Ms. Glasson said that already Google has been using those subpoenaed records to suggest that she was distressed for personal reasons, not because of a potentially toxic work environment or discrimination. She said she had been "asked very intimate questions" about her mental health and why she sought treatment in the first place. |
In interviews with The Times, six former and current Google employees recalled that when they spoke up against workplace misconduct, they, too, were offered free short-term counseling — called the Employee Assistance Program (E.A.P.) — or medical leave. This pattern was originally reported by NBC News in March, which cited over a dozen current and former employees. |
A Google executive, who asked not to be identified because he is not permitted to speak to reporters, said that when employees report difficulties at work with a colleague, Google's human resources officers are instructed to remind those employees that the company offers up to 20 therapy sessions a year. (Google recently expanded the benefit to 25 sessions.) |
Of course, offering counseling isn't necessarily a bad thing. In 2018, after a shooting at YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno, Calif., Google — YouTube's parent company — offered employees short-term counseling to help deal with the trauma. |
Nor is this kind of counseling unique to Google. Large companies in lots of industries, including finance and logistics, offer something similar. |
But counseling can become problematic when it's used as a stopgap or a quick fix to resolve tense workplace situations that might not legally be considered harassment or bullying but that are nonetheless unacceptable, said Erica Scott, a human resources expert. |
Tolerating bad managers while directing employees to a counseling program is a "shocking" way to "shield the employer from accountability," she said. "These are employee matters that are the employer's obligation to deal with, not a third party." |
Some Google staff members who raised concerns said that while medical leave and counseling were helpful resources, an internal investigation into their complaints either didn't take place, or ended up dragging on for months. |
"We think that offering free third-party counseling and support that employees can choose to use if they want is the right thing for an employer to do to support people, and they've been extremely beneficial for many employees," Shannon Newberry, a Google spokeswoman, said in an email. "Our Employee Assistance Program would never be offered in place of an investigation," she added, pointing to companywide changes put in effect last year to how complaints are investigated. The company, which has more than 140,000 employees, also added that 90 percent of Google survey respondents who had used counseling services in 2020 were satisfied or highly satisfied with the service. |
In most cases, when a company steers an employee to counseling, that person would be asked to share their medical and mental health history with the counselor, not unlike seeing a new doctor. But that may put them in a situation in which sensitive information about their past is surfaced within a workplace context or on the office campus, said Ramit Mizrahi, founder of Mizrahi Law. |
Ann Hull, an employment lawyer, said the misuse of short-term counseling started becoming more common across industries in the past five years or so. She expressed concern around how much the counselors — who are often contractors working with multiple companies — would protect an employee's privacy. |
And if an employee goes on to sue the company for emotional damages, which can yield more compensation than suing only for economic losses, employers may be able to leverage those private records, Ms. Mizrahi said, as Google has done in Ms. Glasson's case. The more recent the therapy or counseling, the more likely it is that the notes can be used. |
"If a potential client called me and said: 'I'm being harassed at work, I feel really stressed and anxious. Do you think I should use my company's E.A.P.?'" Ms. Mizrahi said, "I would advise them against it." |
Keep reading the story here. |
Here are four articles from The Times you may have missed. |
 | | New York Attorney General Letitia James on Tuesday announced the findings of the investigation into New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.Dave Sanders for The New York Times |
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- "Unwanted groping, kisses, hugging." Letitia James, the New York State attorney general, said on Tuesday that a monthslong independent investigation found the New York State governor, Andrew Cuomo, sexually harassed multiple women and retaliated against at least one for making her complaints public. [Read the story]
- "Are you sure An San isn't a feminist? She meets all the requirements to be one." An San, a 20-year-old archer, won her third gold medal at the Olympics for South Korea and toppled a world record. But people at home are more concerned about her hairstyle. [Read the story]
- "Empower women and the people who celebrate them." Reese Witherspoon will sell Hello Sunshine, her production studio, to a Wall Street-backed company. [Read the story]
- "Pressures and privileges." Three new books which delve into the hard choices faced by modern families are reviewed by the author Lauren Smith Brody. [Read the story]
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In Her Words is written by Alisha Haridasani Gupta and edited by Francesca Donner. Our art director is Catherine Gilmore-Barnes, and our photo editor is Maura Foley. |
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