Hopefully the below will never be relevant to your time at PostHog! However, it’s important to have a clear process around how we do this stuff in order to ensure everyone is treated fairly and transparently.
A couple of notes before we get started:
- Any outcome of these processes will only be shared with the people involved, not the wider team. Likewise, we ask people involved to maintain confidentiality in these cases. This is to give the best chance of a team member being able to fix their behavior and to work together with the rest of the company in future - any misconduct issue may be deeply personal and sensitive compared to, for example, a performance issue.
- We will do our best to balance being thorough with coming to a speedy resolution for everyone involved. We’d expect a process to take ~4 weeks.
- Our default assumption is that we can resolve disciplinary issues and grievances internally. However, if an issue or grievance is particularly serious or difficult to resolve, we may need to bring in external legal help.
- This isn’t a court of law - we’re just trying to establish what is most likely to have happened based on the information we have.
These policies are deliberately short and simple, and use the Acas template as a model. If you have any detailed questions about how they work in practice, please ask Charles.
Disciplinary process
In cases of minor misconduct which cannot be resolved informally, we may issue a formal verbal warning.
In cases of serious misconduct, or multiple instances of minor misconduct, we may issue a formal written warning and then a final written warning. If these do not resolve the issue, we may move to dismissal with or without severance, depending on the circumstances.
Serious misconduct includes things such as:
- Discrimination, bullying, or harassment
- Theft or fraud
- Physical violence
- Deliberate and/or serious damage to property
- Drug or alcohol abuse at work
- Causing loss, damage or injury through serious negligence
- Intentional breach of confidentiality
- A material breach of your employment contract
If you are named as the person being accused of misconduct, you will be advised in writing prior to any relevant meeting with you of your alleged misconduct, and will be given a reasonable opportunity to respond prior to a formal meeting. Meetings are usually held with James or Tim, plus Charles. If you are in the UK (or other certain jurisdictions where the right to bring other people with you is a legal requirement - in which case we require you to confirm the other attendees in advance of the meeting), you are entitled to bring a colleague or trade union representative to these meetings. We will send round written notes afterwards, which will be kept confidential.
Finally, we may omit any of the stages of procedure listed above as circumstances require, for example if the misconduct is exceptionally serious.
Grievance process
All proceedings are confidential, and you will never be punished for bringing a grievance (unless it’s obviously malicious), even if no action is taken.
If, for whatever reason, you have a grievance regarding another team member, you should, in the first instance, try to resolve the matter informally, directly with the other person. We recommend the OFNR framework for this to help de-escalate.
If this doesn’t work, or you aren’t comfortable doing so, you can speak to James or Tim about your grievance and they can help you to resolve it informally. If the matter regards one of them please speak to Charles.
If the matter cannot be resolved informally, you should put the details of your grievance in writing and send it to James, Tim, and Charles. There is no particular format to follow, and you can start at this step if needed. To make sure we can investigate your grievance properly:
- Try and raise your grievance as soon as possible - it's easier to figure out what happened that way.
- Give specific examples of the behavior that you felt was misconduct. Try to avoid sweeping statements.
- Avoid including heresay or other people’s comments in your grievance. On a sidenote, if you wish to whistleblow on an illegal or dangerous behavior, please email James/Tim and Charles.
- While this process is confidential, our default assumption is that grievances are not made anonymously as this makes it harder for us to investigate or to report back to those raising the complaint.
- Please be understanding with those dealing with your grievance. We take these issues very, very seriously, and likely any action we take is difficult in one way or another.
James, Tim and/or Charles will hold a meeting(s) to discuss further. If you are in the UK (or other certain jurisdictions where the right to bring other people with you is a legal requirement - in which case we require you to confirm the other attendees in advance of the meeting), you are entitled to bring a colleague or trade union representative to these meetings, and we will send round written notes afterwards, which will be kept confidential to those in the meeting and those the complaint is being made about. The number/type of meetings held is flexible depending on the nature of the grievance. You are not obliged to attend a meeting with the person you have a grievance against if you don’t want to.
If, following investigation, your grievance is not upheld, then we will support everyone in rebuilding their working relationship to the extent it is possible. We may consider making arrangements to avoid the affected parties working together closely.
Appeals
If you disagree with the outcome of either of the above processes, you have the right to appeal if you can demonstrate why you believe a particular aspect of the investigation has materially affected the outcome. Appeals must be submitted within 2 weeks of receiving the outcome.
If an appeal is submitted, we’ll arrange a final meeting within a reasonable time period. Any decision made here will be final and there is no further right of appeal. We will aim for the meeting to be held by a member of the Exec team who wasn’t involved in the process previously.