WeVow aims to prevent, deal with sexual harassment complaints

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The past year’s string of “#metoo” incidents of sexual harassment accusations has spawned interest in WeVow, a Boise startup that provides services and a seal, like that of Good Housekeeping or the Better Business Bureau, pledging that subscribing companies are working to prevent and deal with such incidents.

“Three years ago, I had an idea, a picture in my mind of a seal on a door of a business that symbolized making a public promise to elevate how business was done,” said founder and CEO Matt Pipkin. “It puts employees at ease, and also draws talent to look for that seal as being a company they want to work for.”

“It struck a chord with me, and I asked, ‘How fast can we join?’” said George Seybold, CEO and founder of Talloo LLC, a Boise-based referral partner company. The four members of Talloo’s limited liability corporation – three men and one woman – joined about two months ago and were probably about the second company to join WeVow, he said.

WeVow appealed to Seybold’s core beliefs, he said. “We need to lift people up and allow them to reach their full potential,” and sexual harassment gets in the way of that, he said. “I wanted to send a signal that our members hold the highest level as well, and part of that is treating people with honor and decency.”

While for now Talloo’s agreement with WeVow is only for the four members of the corporation, Seybold said he hoped to work with WeVow in the future to extend the agreement across the company’s product network.

Membership costs $3 per employee per month for companies with 50 or fewer employees, and scales down as the company grows, Pipkin said. That allows a company or organization to use the WeVow charter seal internally and externally.

In addition, every employee gets a unique link to an incident reporting platform website. “It’s very simple and user friendly and non-intimidating to make it easy to report incidents, and for human resources or the owner to gather information all at once rather than having to go back and forth,” he said.

Also, every employee of a member company has access to five free counseling sessions a year for any sexual incident, ranging from childhood to the present.

Future plans for WeVow include developing training videos to comply with California and New York regulations, and as a value-add for other states, Pipkin said. In addition, the company will develop “bucket” pricing for organizations and events for limited periods of time.