There were a series of accusations about our company last August from a former employee. Immediately following these accusations, LMG hired Roper Greyell - a large Vancouver-based law firm specializing in labor and employment law, to conduct a third-party investigation. Their website describes them as “one of the largest employment and labour law firms in Western Canada.” They work with both private and public sector employers.
To ensure a fair investigation, LMG did not comment or publicly release any data and asked our team members to do the same. Now that the investigation is complete, we’re able to provide a summary of the findings.
The investigation found that:
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Claims of bullying and harassment were not substantiated.
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Allegations that sexual harassment were ignored or not addressed were false.
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Any concerns that were raised were investigated. Furthermore, from reviewing our history, the investigator is confident that if any other concerns had been raised, we would have investigated them.
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There was no evidence of “abuse of power” or retaliation. The individual involved may not have agreed with our decisions or performance feedback, but our actions were for legitimate work-related purposes, and our business reasons were valid.
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Allegations of process errors and miscommunication while onboarding this individual were partially substantiated, but the investigator found ample documentary evidence of LMG working to rectify the errors and the individual being treated generously and respectfully. When they had questions, they were responded to and addressed.
In summary, as confirmed by the investigation, the allegations made against the team were largely unfounded, misleading, and unfair.
With all of that said, in the spirit of ongoing improvement, the investigator shared their general recommendation that fast-growing workplaces should invest in continuing professional development. The investigator encouraged us to provide further training to our team about how to raise concerns to reinforce our existing workplace policies.
Prior to receiving this report, LMG solicited anonymous feedback from the team in an effort to ensure there was no unreported bullying and harassment and hosted a training session which reiterated our workplace policies and reinforced our reporting structure. LMG will continue to assess ongoing continuing education for our team.
At this time, we feel our case for a defamation suit would be very strong; however, our deepest wish is to simply put all of this behind us. We hope that will be the case, given the investigator’s clear findings that the allegations made online were misrepresentations of what actually occurred. We will continue to assess if there is persistent reputational damage or further defamation.
This doesn’t mean our company is perfect and our journey is over. We are continuously learning and trying to do better. Thank you all for being part of our community.
I feel like the fact they paid the same party that investigated them is an obvious enough conflict of interest to dismiss this out of hand. Whether the report is actually trustworthy or not, there is an incentive to come to a conclusion that aligns with whomever paid them and that alone should make people question the conclusions being made.
Okay. So what should LTT have done?
Ignore it completely and not respond?
Invite a third party to do it. The funds could have come from crowd-sourcing.
What.
In what world does this happen?
It’s how all the serious stuff in the world are handled.
- Courts of law
- Open source code
- Scientific peer review
Although there’s a fair bit of corruption in all if the above platforms, they are consistently better than “I investigated myself and didn’t find any evidence” solutions. Mind you, even EY the financial audit giant was caught red handed presenting what their client wanted to say, instead of trying to find the truth. I recommend that you look into this scandal.
That’s not what I was referring to. I meant using a commercial third party investigation for the alleged wrongdoings of a company (just like what happened here), except it’s funded through crowd sourcing. When has that ever happened?
Like, who is the demographic that would pay for that? In the end, I figure it would still most likely be an invested party coughing up a substantial part of the money.
Subscribers donating to Gamer Nexus so that they can do investigative journalism without licking manifacturer boots? That’s crowd-sourcing. Didn’t you watch their recent couple of videos?
Don’t forget that that’s how this whole fiasco started. Do you think Linus would have done this without GN doing that video? And the viewers giving Linus hell because of it?
You keep trying to move the conversation to different subjects, but I want to address your initial claim - inviting a third party to do an independent investigation of a company’s alleged wrongdoings. I never heard of such a thing occurring.
But fine, let’s go with your example.
If there was a scandal at GN, and they’d use that crowd source money to pay for a third party investigation, it would somehow be better than what LMG did now?
If you’re one of the people in this thread insisting this does nothing to exonerate LTT, what would you accept as evidence that they’re innocent? I don’t follow YouTube drama much at all, I just think it’s wild when people form an opinion based on on set of statements and then are never open to learning more facts about the case ever again.
Receipts. The actual data used to come to these conclusions. I have worked with attorneys in corporate law firms in some capacity for almost 20 years and while I am not a lawyer I can confidently say they don’t take these engagements to find the truth. They do it to prep for a case and to build a chain of events that show they are acting in good faith increasing their chances filing a motion to dismiss while identifying liability and building a defense. The one point they conceded regarding her claims that they lied in onboarding the attorneys are basically saying if that case gets filed there is a high chance a judge will find it has merit and move it forward. Idk of Canada court system is the same but in America thats corporate lawyer for youd probably pay a settlement or damages on this point.
What if that standard were to be applied to the people making the assertions? Shouldn’t the burden of proof be on the accuser, not the accused? Seems kinda backwards the way you described it, someone can just say some things about you and now you are obligated to release internal documents/chat logs/emails or whatever else to prove their assertions wrong?
No they’re not obligated to release anything, and neither is she. In a situation like this its up to the observer to form their own opinions. People will take each parties past and future actions in account as well. It is very believable to me that LTT has a toxic culture based purely on the upload schedule and past conflict with other reviewers and product startups. I think most of the claims were descriptive enough to be believable although some may have been exaggerated and painted by the whistleblowers past experience such as the bait and switch onboarding. My opinion doesn’t really matter though, im just going to stop interacting with LTT based on how theyve reacted and conducted themselves over multiple public incidents.
Generally speaking, the employer has all the power and own the records which would prove the whistleblower right or wrong and it is much more difficult to retain that information as an employee. The power imbalance in the relationship and the role of the company as custodian of records here is what changes the expectation. Power imbalance is what has caused high profile people with money and fame to get away with bad behavior for thousands of years so society is working to address that now. Not going to be perfect at first but its a good start
