Finally, a startup that takes reporting sexual harassment seriously
Even before Harvey Weinstein kicked off this wave of actual consequences for sexual assault and harassment, Claire Schmidt was thinking about how to create a platform that would help victims.
Schmidt, who up through this week was vice president of technology and innovation at Twentieth Century Fox, on Tuesday launched the startup AllVoices. The web platform will let people anonymously report their experiences of sexual harassment at work, and will in turn aggregate that data to give companies insights on the true scale of the problem.
It's a much-needed third option for victims of sexual harassment besides making their experiences public through litigation or in the press. For victims of harassment whose harassers aren't high-profile enough to warrant news coverage, a platform like this is basically the only other option besides taking legal action.
SEE ALSO:#MeToo movement marches on Hollywood against sexual assault and harassment"Employees are still really scared to report harassment at work."
"Employees are still really scared to report harassment at work," Schmidt said. "CEOs and boards don't have the data and they don't have the transparency to fully understand the scale of the problems happening in their organizations."
"I realized I could build a platform that would help solve both of those problems at the same time," she added.
The web platform—not an app, to maximize security and anonymity—asks specific questions so that the data can be sent to employers at an aggregate level. Individuals can share the nature of their experience—whether they dealt with sexual advances, uncomfortable jokes or comments, physical or verbal offenses—and if they think the harassment was based on any part of their identity, including gender, race, age, and disability.
Individuals also share whether they're a full-time employee, whether they worked with a company's employees as a client or outside partner, or whether they were a startup pitching someone at another firm. Bystanders are also able to report harassment they saw happen to someone else.
AllVoices is still working out the details surrounding reporting individual, named offenders. The platform is also figuring out how to distinguish between data points describing 10 offenders at a company or one individual who committed 10 offenses.
Companies will receive a report from AllVoices that tells them how many reports the platform has received about harassment at their organization. From there, companies can sign up to receive further detailed insights. AllVoices wants companies to be able to track culture metrics in the same way they can track financial performance or other, in business-speak, KPIs.
"CEOs and boards don't have the data to fully understand the scale of the problems."
The platform has several advisors, including Uber whistleblower Susan Fowler, theBoardlist founder Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, and Tinder founder Sean Rad.
Rad, who invested in AllVoices and worked with Schmidt on product questions, was involved in a sexual harassment lawsuit at Tinder. Whitney Wolfe Herd, now founder of Bumble, sued her co-founders at Tinder for sexual harassment. The bulk of the allegations were against Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, but Rad allegedly ignored complaints about harassment at his company. He definitely didn't come off well in text messages revealed during the 2014 lawsuit.
Schmidt declined to comment about Rad's history with sexual harassment at Tinder.
AllVoices' launch date isn't finalized, and the team is still working out a few final details.
"I am driven by my desire to create a safe place for people to report what they’ve experienced without having to come forward publicly, risk their jobs or reputations, or fear retaliation," Schmidt wrote in a blog post announcing her new venture. "I believe this tool will provide that safe space, while helping companies take action quickly and effectively."
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TopicsSocial Good