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According to U.S-based employees of Google, the HR team would allegedly suggest staff take mental health leave when they issued complaints reporting sexist or racist behaviour in the workplace. Various former and current employees of Google have stated that HR would encourage employees to take medical leave and undergo mental health counselling when they issued complaints of misconduct in the workplace. This would occur even when the complaints about workplace behaviour were not linked to mental health, employees have said. Benjamin Cruz, a former employee, said that they had complained to HR about a comment made by a colleague which expressed “surprise” at Cruz “being darker than expected”. However, Cruz stated that, as a result of filing that complaint, the “work was pushed out” from under them. Cruz further went onto state that once medical leave was recommended, it “was like an automatic process”, leading them to get rejected from every subsequent role they applied for at the firm. These allegations come after several high-profile cases of the company terminating employees who were closely linked to diversity and inclusion initiatives. At the end of last year, Google allegedly fired Timnit Gebru, co-lead of its ethical AI research team. Ms. Gebru
