Companies need strong guidelines on workplace behaviour, but those at PricewaterhouseCoopers were roundly ignored by the young men who rated the looks of female employees in this week’s ‘hot mail’ controversy

EVERY OCTOBER hundreds of talented graduates join the high-profile accountancy firm that came under global scrutiny this week after the circulation of an e-mail that rated new female recruits on their looks.

These PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) graduates are called “intakes”. When they arrive they receive “ethics training” and are apprised of the company’s expectations in terms of respectful colleague interaction. The company’s website lists “behaving professionally” and “respecting others” among its stipulations on expected conduct.

It appears, however, that this company ethos was roundly ignored by the men involved in what has been dubbed the hot-mail controversy. The men compiled a “top 10” list of 13 newly hired women (for a bunch of accountants their mathematics was shabby), grading them on their attractiveness. Corporate ID photographs and the company e-mail system were used to share banter that would usually be confined to after-work drinks in the pub.

Some commentators believe the debacle proves that the Mad Menculture is alive and well in the corporate world.

A derogatory British slang word was used to describe the women in the e-mail, which was shared among twentysomething male employees. It then went viral, ending up in newspapers and on influential news websites, such as Gawker, across the globe. One of the participants in the e-mail commented that the list constituted “great work”; another expressed reservations about whether one of the women was attractive enough to be included in the list at all.

PwC is investigating the e-mail. Compounding the ordeal for the women involved is the fact that their photographs have become an integral part of much media coverage of the story.

One former employee at PwC describes the life of the intake group as being like “a class group in college . . . They generally socialise with the other intakes in the office and outside it. There are lots of nights out when new intakes start working first, and this continues in the run-up to Christmas. So, as well as working together, a lot of people joining the firm party together.”

He adds that the intense socialising often leads, unsurprisingly, to work-based relationships. “Lots of people hook up with colleagues, and there are many people who go on to get married to people they met in the firm.”

It’s a work-hard-play-hard mentality. Working in the auditing section, where many of the women featured in the e-mail were placed, can involve long hours and trips outside Dublin, staying in hotels with more senior colleagues for weeks at a time.

“Generally the firm takes staff welfare very seriously,” the former employee says. “The gender mix of new recruits and junior and middle ranks would be 50/50. It skews towards more men at director and partner level, but there is still a high level of women partners. There would be strict policies on the use of information technology, as well as on sexual harassment. I’d believe the firm when it says it is primarily concerned with the welfare of the women involved.”

The story represents a public-relations and human-resources nightmare for PwC, which was rated one of the top 10 Irish workplaces last year. That reputation, and those of other large corporate firms, has been tarnished by the incident, according to the American-born communications specialist Margaret E Ward.

“The first thing I thought about when I saw the e-mail and the photographs in the paper was my eight-year-old daughter,” she says. “It made me wonder should I even bother sending her to college, because, no matter how bright she is or whatever her academic or personal achievements, she is a just going to be a piece of meat to senior executives.”

Caitriona Hughes, human resources expert and lecturer at the National College of Ireland, says that, from a management point of view, companies need to make sure their “core values” are not just aspirational but are part of the day-to-day life of the workplace. “You do this by educating staff and creating an environment where the ethics training is reinforced by discussions in team meetings and at performance reviews. The key thing is to make sure that it doesn’t just become a dust-collecting policy on a shelf somewhere.”

Dr Mary Hogan, a senior management specialist at the Irish Management Institute, agrees. “It’s not enough to have guidelines,” she says. “You need to make sure they are enforced and reinforced; otherwise they will just be forgotten, which is what has happened in this case.”

In her experience sexist or inappropriate e-mails are not a serious problem in the corporate sector. “I don’t see it as something that is rife in the corporate world. Most organisations would have a handle on this and not allow it to happen,” she says. “Employees need to be educated that something which they might see as just a bit of craic can cause a lot of upset for those involved, even if that is not the intent.”

As Gawker puts it: “Perhaps this will serve as a warning to office-working dudes across the world: don’t do this.”