Ex-employee alleges Smartsheet retaliated after harassment complaints

Her difficulties, the complaint alleges, began under a new manager. In an early one-on-one, the filing says, the manager asked about her background; when she shared that she was a first-generation Chinese American raised by a single mother who worked as a cleaner, she alleges he responded that “it must be easy.” In the following weeks, according to the complaint, the manager questioned whether she was “equipped” for the role, told her she “looked lost,” and issued the first of several disciplinary “Action Items.”

The complaint sets out a close timeline. The employee alleges that her first internal complaint, on March 2, 2023, came the same day as that first Action Item. She says she raised the manager’s conduct with a diversity program manager, a people partnerships director, and a people business partner. According to the filing, further Action Items followed within days, then a Performance Improvement Plan, and then her termination on June 6, 2023.

Central to the case is what the employee alleges the company did not do. The complaint claims that across a series of meetings, Smartsheet’s response was to offer her leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) or time off, and on one occasion to convene a joint meeting that placed her back in direct contact with the manager she had reported. She alleges the company never offered to move her to a different team or manager, and never opened an inquiry into the manager’s conduct. Each proposed remedy, the filing states, placed what it describes as “the burden of removal” on her.

The complaint also alleges unequal treatment. During one team meeting, according to the filing, a white male colleague was permitted to contact client system administrators while the employee was criticized for similar conduct, under a written sales policy she was told did not allow it.

The employee further alleges that the company’s stated performance reasons were a pretext. The complaint cites Smartsheet’s own internal messages from the period she was being disciplined for missed quota, including a senior leader’s company-wide message describing a “difficult scenario” of “limited headcount and systematic errors in routing and scoring.” A non-party colleague, according to the filing, described the sales teams in internal messages as “decimated by the promotions” and “scrambling to fill the gaps.”