Howard Levitt: When company culture becomes ‘Exhibit A’

Culture must be curated with the same care as contracts, values must be vetted like policies, and leadership speech must be treated as governance, not therapy. Photo by Martin Barraud/Getty Images/Postmedia files

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Founder-led companies love to tell the world they are different.

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Different from stodgy corporations.

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Different from bureaucratic dinosaurs.

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Different from lawyers, bankers, subsidy-sucking government creations. Different from any other company.

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They celebrate transparency. Radical candour. Authentic leadership. Flat hierarchies. Values-driven decision-making. Slack instead of silence. LinkedIn instead of legal advice.

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And for growth, innovation and talent attraction, the branding works — until it doesn’t.

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Because in today’s employment litigation landscape, culture is no longer a feel-good abstraction. It is evidence. It is discoverable. And, increasingly, it is fatal.

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The modern employment lawsuit is not built around dusty policy manuals. It is built around screenshots, culture decks, town halls, leadership posts, internal chats and public statements about “who we are.”

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And founder-led tech companies — especially those that scale quickly, preach values loudly and operate remotely — are handing plaintiffs’ counsel the rope and almost inviting them to tie the knot.

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Let me be clear: courts and tribunals do not care how inspiring your mission is. They care what you said, what employees reasonably relied upon and whether your conduct matched the promises you broadcast.

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When a company tells employees that it is a “family,” it has just raised expectations around loyalty and job security.

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When it promises “psychological safety,” it has just expanded the definition of harm.

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When it boasts of “radical transparency,” it has just destroyed any hope of privilege or discretion.

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When it claims to “lead with empathy,” it has just raised the standard by which terminations will be judged — by the courts or administrative and regulatory tribunals.

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In litigation, those statements are not inspirational. They are incriminating.

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Worse still is the modern founder’s instinct to communicate constantly and informally. CEOs now speak directly to staff through Slack, video messages and open forums — often without filters, preparation or legal review.

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Authenticity may play well internally. It plays disastrously in cross-examination.

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Every casual comment becomes context.

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Every frustrated message becomes motive.

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Every moral stance becomes a benchmark.

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I have watched cases turn not on what a company did, but on how loudly it proclaimed it would never do such a thing.

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And then did.

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Remote-first companies face an even deadlier version of this problem. When you hire everywhere, you import everything: employment standards, human rights regimes, termination rules and cultural expectations from many jurisdictions.