"They're f---king morons," an executive said about immigrants grinding away on a project. “That's why white people are at the top of the pecking order.” Three of those foreign, blue collar laborers had lost their lives on the job — a $1.5 trillion construction project in Saudi Arabia considered to be the world’s largest — and the executive was one of several called to an emergency meeting. “A whole bunch of people die so we’ve got to have a meeting on a Sunday night,” he groused.
Callous and discriminatory communication hurts any team, but when it comes from the top, doesn’t it send a message to the entire workforce that this behavior is acceptable? Couldn’t that lead to a culture of disrespect and reputational risk?
The answers are yes, yes and yes, according to the latest from the Wall Street Journal, as it investigates the management at Neom, an ambitious plan for a smart city by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to shift the oil producing-nation toward innovation and development.
The Journal’s investigation, based on audio recordings of senior leaders, alleges that the smart city project is being overseen by individuals with questionable pasts (conspiracy, fraud, nepotism, embezzlement) who are engaging in demeaning language and behavior in their new posts.They include Wayne Borg, a former Hollywood exec, head of Neom’s media division, who made the comments about the workers, and Nadhmi al-Nasr, chief executive of the project.
“You can’t train for stupidity,” Borg reportedly said in a meeting that sought to determine the cause of the workers’s deaths. “The white blokes are at the top of the tree.”
Borg also engaged in misogynistic language and was called in to human resources for referring to a Black female subordinate as a “Black shit.” He had issued multiple explicit messages stating her “arse is better than Beyoncé’s,” with kiss emojis. He later referenced the incident as “that f—ing episode I had with that Black bitch,” the Journal reported, and characterized women from the Arabian Gulf as “transvestites.”
For his part, al-Nasr has intimidated employees to the point that dozens of them have quit. In 2020, two video game companies withdrew sponsorships for Neom after fans complained about human rights issues in Saudi Arabia. Al-Nasr railed against his communications team for failing to warn him the withdrawal was a possibility, saying, “If you don’t tell me who is responsible, I’m going to take a gun from under my desk and shoot you,” the Journal reported in 2022.
Al-Nasr’s leadership was “consistently inclusive of disparagement and inappropriately dismissive and demeaning outbursts,” according to the resignation letter of a California ski resort executive who’d been hired to work at a Neom ski project and quit, the Journal noted.
Another executive was encouraged to hike out to the desert so Al-Nasr could relieve himself on him. And, the Journal reported in 2022, Al-Nasar said at another meeting, “I drive everybody like a slave. When they drop down dead, I celebrate. That’s how I do my projects.”
Neom issued a statement in response to the Journal investigation: “We take allegations of this nature very seriously. We are committed to upholding our Code of Conduct, which sets clear standards for the actions and behaviors of every employee. We do not tolerate breaches of our Code of Conduct and have adopted a zero-tolerance approach to discrimination and harassment in all forms.”
While construction projects like Neom can make headlines for their ambitious scale, they risk being overshadowed by scandals that arise from unchecked leadership. Ensuring compliant communication is not just about avoiding legal troubles; it's about protecting an organization's reputation and profitability.
Reflect AI offers a solution by detecting and stopping harmful and unlawful language patterns in workplace communication before they escalate into costly mistakes.
Here is how Reflect AI would have responded to the comments by Neom’s leadership team:
“Fucking morons”
“That is why white people are at the top of the pecking order.”
“When they drop down dead, I celebrate. That’s how I do my projects.”
Amanda Nurse is the editorial and operations coordinator at Alphy.
Reflect AI by Alphy is an AI communication compliance solution that detects and flags language that is harmful, unlawful, and unethical in digital communication, including threats of physical harm. Alphy was founded to reduce the risk of litigation from harmful and discriminatory communication while helping employees communicate more effectively.
Contact us for a demo at sales@alphyco.com.
Comments