It started with an email. In the spring of 2019, a Microsoft employee asked colleagues how it is with them with a glass ceiling and sexual harassment. She “tore the scab off a festering wound with it,” said another employee later. The HR department of the largest software company in the world, which had apparently not taken the problem seriously enough before, now had to react.
Not that much came out of it, however, at least too little in the opinion of the Supervisory Board. One and a half years later, in one of the rare cases in which the supervisory body overrides the executive board, its members voted for Microsoft not only to report annually how many cases there were and how they were dealt with. The management level is not spared either.
In the case of Microsoft, that has hit a company legend to date: Bill Gates, the co-founder and long-time head of the largest software company in the world. Some time ago reports surfaced that the board of directors was investigating rumors of a love affair with an employee. Gates was a member of the board of directors until last year.
Relationships between employees, especially bosses to subordinates, are considered objectionable in the United States. Mark Hurd, the head of the computer company HP, for example, had to resign in 2010 after his relationship with a subordinate became known.
Bill Gates has not played a major role at Microsoft for a long time, he mainly concentrated on his foundation. Satya Nadella has been running the business since 2014. After the supervisory board meeting, he said that the step of the supervisory board and its feedback were very much appreciated. One always tries to learn to listen and to act.
This means that the philanthropist and manager Nadella, who was born in India, has a duty to create a corporate culture in which women are neither disadvantaged nor sexually harassed. He has led Microsoft to unexpectedly great heights – the share price has risen by a seemingly fabulous 800 percent since he came to the helm.
However, when it comes to gender equality, Nadella is not completely unencumbered. Shortly after he took office, female Microsoft employees reached out to him to ask if he could make sure there was more equality of opportunity. But he brushed them off with the sentence that they just had to perform well. But he should have learned from the storm of indignation that arose afterwards.