While the Chicago Cubs continue an internal investigation into former executive Jared Porter’s misconduct with a female reporter, the team is planning on making changes to its hiring process.
Speaking publicly for the first time since Porter was fired last month as the New York Mets‘ general manager, Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said his organization’s new hiring practice will start with a more “thorough” background check on any potential employee.
“I think about the way we would like our process to be, like for a first-round draft pick,” Hoyer said Monday. “And to be candid, sometimes in the hiring process, we probably rely on a handful of bosses that a person has to talk through and maybe we don’t talk to enough people or a broad range of people.”
Hoyer specifically mentioned talking to more women who have worked with or in proximity to the candidate. He wants to bring the kind of focus they use in the draft, where many people from the player’s life have a voice in the process.
“I think when it comes to being incredibly thorough, our background checks — trying to interview not just a person’s bosses or people that you know well, but trying to dig in and interview, whether it’s women that they worked with in the past (or) whether it’s female reporters they’ve worked with,” Hoyer said. “It’s really important to be thorough.”
Porter was a member of the Cubs front office when his misconduct took place back in 2016. Since his firing, another high-profile leader — Angels pitching coach and former Mets manager Mickey Callaway — also has come under scrutiny for his interactions with multiple women.
“It’s my job to make sure every woman that works here, every woman that is a reporter for our team, every vendor, everyone that comes through Wrigley Field has to feel like this is a wonderful environment to work in and they have to look forward to being here,” Hoyer said. “We need to get to that place as those incidents are disturbing. There’s no place for them in the game, and we have to get to a place where it’s not just an OK culture, but a culture where women can thrive.”
Hoyer couldn’t declare a timetable for the Cubs’ internal investigation but said interviews were being done. One employee allegedly knew about the inappropriate behavior displayed by Porter but didn’t report it up the chain of the command.
Hoyer also said he will employ his new hiring practices in the Cubs’ own search for a general manager.
“That’s one of the things we talked about as far as the search for the GM position,” he said.