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| Employee Handbook |
| The Office Romance: Does your company need an |
A Senior Executive at Staples, a company with a no-dating policy, was recently forced to resign his position when it became apparent that he was involved romantically with his secretary. It is difficult to say whether the executive or the company has suffered more. One lost a lucrative position. The other lost a highly valued, highly productive employee.
“High-profile romances, including those in the Oval Office, have focused national attention on issues of sex and privacy in the workplace,” writes Mary Stanton, a personnel administrator. The difficulty lies mainly in the “supervisory suicide” of a relationship between supervisors and subordinates. “If unequal power relationships go sour, the subordinate could claim the affair was not consensual and file a sex harassment charge. If the subordinate is later discharged, he or she might claim retaliation,” Stanton continues. Other difficulties include morale, productivity and conflict-of-interest problems.
Most companies have responded by requesting our assistance in writing anti-fraternization policies into their employee handbooks. For example, Natalie Camper, president of The Camper Group, a management consulting firm, recommends a policy which restricts “romantic liaisons when there is a reporting relationship between the two parties.” Other companies’ policies are even more all-inclusive. These include statements that prohibit everything from dating, shared living accommodations, and engaging in intimate or sexual relations, to prohibition of shared business enterprises, gambling, and borrowing money.
Although it is important for your company to have an anti-fraternization policy in place, enforcing it can become a touchy matter, fraught with a whole new set of risks, including an employee’s complaint that the company’s policy infringes on his or her right to privacy. We are prepared to assist you both with writing workable policy, and with enforcing it. Please contact a member of our Risk Management Team with additional questions.
“Dating is your business until it begins to interfere with the work. Then it becomes my business…”
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