Building safe and welcoming workspaces at Creative Commons

Yesterday, former Creative Commons employee Billy Meinke posted his account of harassment by his manager during his employment at CC. As CEO, I want to acknowledge the hurt that led Billy to speak publicly about his experience, and inform our community about how we deal with incidents of harassment. It’s important to recognize that he came forward to report something he experienced, and that doing so is difficult. I also want to make it clear that we took that allegation of abuse seriously in 2014 and have also taken steps to improve our processes since that time. That is in no way to suggest that he didn’t experience behavior he found objectionable, or to dismiss his right to talk about events he experienced personally.

Billy was an intern at Creative Commons in 2012, and then a full-time employee until 2015. According to his post, he experienced verbal harassment from his manager, and witnessed problematic behavior by the same person towards others. Billy first notified HR of his complaints in August 2014. I want to share what we learned from that incident, and what we have in place today. Harassment is a problem in tech and the open community, and we don’t want it in our house.

The incidents he describes predate my appointment as CEO, but even then, CC had anti-discrimination, harassment, and retaliation policies in place (U.S. Handbook [pdf]; Canada Handbook [pdf]). If complaints are raised by an employee or community member, I take them seriously, and we act swiftly. We acknowledged the claim immediately, and met with him the next day to begin the investigation. The complaint was resolved within two weeks.

While we won’t comment on the specifics of any employee, we took disciplinary action against his manager, and the individual in question is no longer with the organization. In addition, we took steps to ensure the safety of our staff and community. All CC staff take anti-harassment training, and update that training at regular intervals. The CC Summit, our Slack community, and the renewed network all now operate under a community-designed and collaboratively-authored codes of conduct (here are the links for CC’s codes of conduct for Summit, for Slack, and our Global Network). Additionally, we have since instituted more regular training for all CC employees to further instill the importance of a harassment-free work place environment.

Today, Creative Commons continues to work to be the most welcoming and safe workplace possible. Although the incidents he described happened before I took my role as CEO, I nevertheless and unequivocally apologize for what occurred.

Harassment has no place in our movement, and we need to do better. I’m committed to working with our open communities to make them safe for all to participate fully.

Sincerely,

Ryan Merkley
CEO, Creative Commons