Company policy on dating subordinates
10-Jul-2020 10:40
When a workplace romance sours, it can expose the company to increased liability, since the connection between alleged actors is easier to establish--essentially giving the plaintiff some good ammunition for his or her case.
Relationships between supervisors and subordinates create even more potential problems.
I told him I’d check with our attorney about potential legal issues, but I’m concerned that this is an ethics minefield. A: There are numerous ethical issues involved in an owner or CEO or, really, any manager dating an employee.
You and your partner need to see your attorney as well as an HR expert, but first you need to have an owner-to-owner talk about leadership ethics.
The legal issue is what I like to call the "amplification" of potential liability that always exists around the employer-employee relationship.
" While the answer to the first question is pretty simple, the answer to the latter is less obvious.This is no dating game—the relationship, whether or not they stay together, could wreak havoc on your culture and company.Playing musical chairs with direct reports does not solve the ethical issues that come with this interoffice romance.Enforcing these policies can take their toll on a company. Earlier this year, Best Buy's chief executive, Brian Dunn, stepped down after an investigation by the board discovered he had shown "extremely poor judgment" with a 29-year-old female employee.
Just last month, Gary Friedman, the chief executive of Restoration Hardware, stepped down in the middle of the company's public offering. A couple years ago, Hewlett-Packard's chief executive, Mike Hurd, resigned amid accusations of falsifying expense reports to hide a personal relationship with an independent contractor.
According to a Career Builder survey, interoffice dating has a fairly high success rate--of the 38% of people surveyed that dated a co-worker at least once, 31% went on to marry that co-worker! If you believe the stats of new employees entering the workforce, it might seem so.
