InHerSight aims to provide constructive feedback to companies about how the women in their workforce view their benefits and culture and to connect women to jobs at companies where they will thrive. We want our space to be a safe one where both employees and employers feel empowered to make the workforce better for women.
Under the First Amendment, you are entitled to post your anonymous opinions about companies or C-suite executives on our site. However, please know that statements of provable facts are subject to legal claims of defamation if a company or executives mentioned allege your statements are false. We’ll cover all of that below.
Read more: What does InHerSight do to protect and defend the anonymous free speech of its users?
Why we remove comments
In addition to legal restrictions, InHerSight has measures in place to guard against offensive and inappropriate comments. We require everyone on our platform to follow these guidelines when interacting on our site. Any comments that do not follow these guidelines will be removed.
1. Profanity, threats, and discrimination
We remove any comments that use profanity, threats of violence, and are discriminatory toward a person or groups. Our perspective is that if you wouldn’t say it during a job interview, then you shouldn’t say it in a comment. If you would say it in a job interview and it’s still offensive, then that’s another issue entirely.
The exception is if those words or phrases were used against an employee, in which case they should be censored like so:
My manager called me a b***h when I told him I didn’t have time to complete a project.
2. Posting names or job titles
Do not write comments targeted at a specific person at your current or former company. Instead, use vague terms like “management” or “leadership” when commenting on personnel matters.
A violation could be overt like this:
My manager, Barbara Manatee, was incredibly rude and often purposefully splashed my desk as she swam by.
Or it could be less so, like if there’s only one person at the company with the job title you mentioned:
The Assistant Manager of Sea Cows was incredibly rude and often purposefully splashed my desk as she swam by.
As stated before, the only exceptions to this rule is using the titles of C-suite executives, who we consider to be the faces of the company and good representatives of a company’s culture. Your comments about them are protected under the First Amendment.
3. Revealing confidential information about your company
Do not share non-public internal company information such as source code, customer lists, manufacturing techniques, R&D activities, budgets, detailed financial results and technical information. They’re likely fascinating, but they’re none of our business.
What does a helpful comment look like?
Rules! We have so many rules! But we do still want you to share information that helps other women navigate the workforce. Here are a few examples of what helpful reviews sound like:
The company has unlimited PTO, but the culture does not support taking time off so there’s a disconnect between benefits and reality.
Management is old-fashioned, which makes it difficult for women to break into leadership roles.
I worked at this company for seven years and never received a raise.
Risks and ways to protect yourself
InHerSight’s ratings and comments are private, and we’ll never choose to disclose your contact information to an employer unless you give us permission. However, you are still responsible for the validity and legality of everything you post on our platform.
Only post comments on InHerSight that are truthful and representative of your own opinion and experience at a company. In the event that a company or executives contest one of your comments, InHerSight will not take sides, and the employer could claim defamation and decide to take legal action against you.
Defamation is a false statement presented as fact that is harmful to a company or person's reputation, and published "with fault," (meaning as a result of negligence or malice). Libel is a written defamation; slander is spoken defamation.
If an employer (or plaintiff) makes this claim, InHerSight could be required by law to forfeit your contact information, meaning they’d learn your identity.
That’s especially true if plaintiffs make what’s called a prima facie showing to the court, which bases the grounds of a lawsuit on the first impression a statement makes, regardless of context or intention. In other words, if the statement appears to be defamatory and the plaintiff offers evidence that it’s false, they can claim defamation and learn your identity.
How to avoid defamation
Complete honesty is a good start, as you alone are responsible for what you post on our platform. But after the truth, there’s the issue of claiming statements as verifiable facts versus opinions.
Verifiable facts are statements that convey a provably false factual assertion: The CEO drinks alone in his office. (Do they or don’t they?)
In general, you’re safer from defamation charges and will likely remain anonymous if you frame your statements as opinions instead of facts, even if those facts end up being true: There seems to be a lot of alcohol abuse at this company.
In the event that you accuse a company of something they contest, they could file charges against you and learn your identity. No evidence to back up your claims would be presented in when they file the charges—only when the case moves forward—so you wouldn’t be able to protect your anonymity.
Examples of facts
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Accusing someone of awarding city contracts to friends and giving bribes
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Stating as "Fact" that someone falsified evidence and presented it in court
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Stating that based on "my own firsthand experience with this building, and its owners a landlord sought to evict 6 tenants and likely contributed to the deaths of 3 tenants and the departures of 8 others"
Examples of opinions
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Posting that the CEO does what she pleases with the bank she runs; that the CEO's son (a bank executive) is a "lazy fat ass", that "this is a piss poor Bank" and a "problem bank" that closed and left customers "high and dry"
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Referring to a company's executives as "boobs, losers, and crooks"
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Accusing someone of suckering people into a "scam" and "pump and dump" scheme;
Even if those examples seem cut and dry, it’s important to remember that during court cases, one judge could interpret a phrase differently than another, so err on the side of caution when writing a review. Draft it and come back, ask a friend to read it over—whatever makes you feel more secure in sharing your thoughts.
Other factors to consider
It’s your responsibility to know where your other liabilities might be, but consider these when moving forward:
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Everything written here pertains to laws in the United States
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What you post might violate a confidentiality agreement (see guideline rule number three above)
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What you post might violate a non-disparagement agreement in your contract with your company
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A clause in your severance might keep you from posting comments on our site
This policy mirrors the one laid out by Glassdoor because it's awesome.
