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Microsoft has chosen a legislation agency to evaluation its sexual harassment and gender discrimination insurance policies, the corporate’s board introduced on Thursday, after shareholders raised alarms about how Microsoft and Invoice Gates, considered one of its founders, had handled workers, particularly ladies.
The board stated it had chosen Arent Fox, based mostly in Washington, D.C. Microsoft stated the agency had by no means accomplished employment-related work for it previously.
Shareholders handed a decision through the firm’s 2021 annual assembly to evaluation the insurance policies Microsoft has in place for its workers to guard them towards abuse and undesirable sexual advances.
The decision handed with help from nearly 78 p.c of Microsoft’s shareholders. It was the one of 5 proposals on moral points put forth by shareholders to succeed. Others, like a name for a report on race- and gender-based pay gaps on the firm and a pledge to ban gross sales of facial recognition to authorities entities, failed.
“Microsoft is below intense public scrutiny as a result of quite a few claims of sexual harassment and an alleged failure to deal with them adequately and transparently,” the textual content of the decision stated. “Studies of Invoice Gates’s inappropriate relationships and sexual advances towards Microsoft workers have solely exacerbated issues, placing in query the tradition set by prime management and the board’s function holding these culpable accountable.”
Mr. Gates solicited no less than two workers whereas he was working Microsoft, in line with reviews in The New York Instances and The Wall Avenue Journal. In a single incident, in 2007, Mr. Gates sat via a presentation by a Microsoft worker, then instantly emailed her to ask for a date. Microsoft leaders later warned Mr. Gates to not do issues like that. In 2019, Microsoft’s board acquired a letter from an engineer claiming to have had a sexual relationship with Mr. Gates in 2000. A spokeswoman for Mr. Gates confirmed that the 2 had had an affair that “ended amicably.”
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief government, stated in a press release on Thursday that office tradition was Microsoft’s “No. 1 precedence.”
“We’re dedicated not simply to reviewing the report however studying from the evaluation so we are able to proceed to enhance the experiences of our workers,” he stated.
Karen Weise contributed reporting.
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