UPDATED 22:46 EST / FEBRUARY 10 2020

POLICY

Amid staff tensions, Google’s HR chief steps down

Eileen Naughton, Google LLC’s head of human resources, will step down from her role at the company amid growing tensions between staff and management.

Naughton had been with Google since 2006 and had spent the last four years working as vice president of people operations. Her position over the last two years surely was a difficult one, with Google being embroiled in various management-employee confrontations.

In 2018, Google employees from all over the world joined in protest against sexual misconduct at the company and the way such cases were dealt with. Since then, a number of employees have expressed how they have been treated harshly by Google for voicing their concerns. Some of those people said they left the company under duress.

Another matter that caused conflicts between staff and management was Google’s involvement with the Pentagon in building artificial intelligence to help identify and flag images for human review from thousands of hours of drone footage taken in Iraq and Syria.

Later in 2019, tensions grew so much that some employees believed Google was spying on its own staff in an effort to weed out troublemakers, something that he company categorically denied. Google was also accused by some employees of unfair labor practices after allegedly hiring a firm to quash dissent.

On top of that, David Drummond, who was the chief legal officer for Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., was investigated for sexual misconduct in 2019. Alphabet’s board has been accused of shielding executives from such allegations.

Part of Naughton’s job was to implement ways to make it easier for employees to report alleged abuse and also make the complaint process less stressful for employees. She was also responsible for enacting improved rights for temp workers and vendors. It’s not clear what role she will now take at Google, although Naughton has said she would like to spend more time with her family.

“I’m at the very beginning of the process, and wanted to let everyone know upfront,” Naughton said in statement to Fortune. “I’ll be working with Sundar [Pichai] and Ruth [Porat] to find a great leader for the people operations team.”

Photo: Tobin/Flickr

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