Aug
6
Rex in the box
Filed Under Sunrise on KGMB9
The Hawaii Tourism Authority headed into executive session Wednesday, with a full board meeting shaping up for next week, to consider what to do about authority CEO Rex Johnson, while Johnson’s friends and foes offered advice on what to do.
The case of the adult emails has turned into a political squabble that has less and less to do with Johnson’s actual transgression, which, according to his own admission, is that he and some of his friends exchanged dirty emails in lieu of actually writing to each other.
Lawmakers who have no official say in the outcome have weighed in on the matter. Media websites abound with citizen comments. Political websites that exist to propogate specific points of view on the broad public issues of the day are defending or attacking Johnson according to their pre-existing views for or against him.
It may be that this does harm to the efforts of good human resources managers everywhere to nudge people in the direction of better behavior in the office, because it certainly introduces a lot of stray elements into what originally was a matter of what makes for decent behavior amidst coworkers.
Some of the comments I’ve read attacking Johnson make much of state Sen. Donna Mercado Kim defending him, and criticize her alledged diva role in watchdogging the tourism authority. In other words: they don’t approve of Kim, and she supports Johnson, so let’s get rid of Johnson.
Some of the comments I’ve read supporting Johnson refer to such attacks, and essentially propose slapping Johnson’s wrist by way of rebuking his critics.
On both sides, some people need to realize it’s not about them. This is a personnel matter, and Johnson should be dealt with according to what would be appropriate for any state employee who kept such emails in his computer.
Not being an HR professional myself, I am still undecided about how big an infraction this was. It is definitely a no-no, indeed it is a violation of the law, to create a “toxic work environment,” and there is plenty of precedent that putting adult or racist content on a computer screen where other people can see it is an example of this. In fact, if a coworker puts pictures of naked ladies on his screen, you can complain about it even if you are a guy who likes pictures of naked ladies, provided you find it improper for the office.
In this case, however, Johnson apparently did not display the emails to anyone in the office, and he says he didn’t send them to any business contacts. The only reason we even know about them is that an auditor, working on something else entirely, opened and read the emails, then decided to report them.
You might conclude that Johnson had a reasonable expectation of privacy for personal email not willingly shared with anybody. It obviously never occurred to Johnson that someone would look at the emails. But it’s not that simple, because almost all employers tell their employees that their phone calls and computer use on company time may not be considered private.
At a minimum, Johnson will be scolded, and he will be probably be censured, and may possibly be suspended without pay for awhile. But it is also possible that he will be dismissed, or that his resignation will be accepted.
If this happened to me and I wanted to keep my job, I would offer, in lieu of two week’s suspension without pay, to give two week’s pay to an appropriate nonprofit. And then I would dedicate myself to proving to the public that it was not wrong to keep me.
But I’m still not convinced that even a suspension is not excessive punishment for personal emails that were never shown to anybody and were seen only by an auditor. As a result, I suspect that many who want Johnson’s head may have disliked him to begin with and are expressing their longstanding view rather than reacting to this particular matter.
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2 Responses to “Rex in the box”
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I agree. I think this much ado about something minute and I’m not sure all the back and forth is really necessary. I do, however, love the title of this post and figure not many others caught the reference. Keep up the great posts. As always, great discussion!!
Howard, outside of Playboy I am not aware of any company where sending or receiving this type of material on a company computer would be acceptable. As the leader of an organization Mr. Johnson has a responsibility to follow policy and lead by example. Clearly Mr. Johnson has failed on both. It does not take an HR professional to determine whether these actions are right or wrong, or how severe the punishment should be. There is only one option. Lastly, with so many free Email options out there why would someone use their work Email if they chose to download such questionable material?