4 ms·
It strikes me as odd that a company should be automatically given privilege to the personal relationships of its employees. Maybe I'm not fully understanding th
by spuz 14y ago
It strikes me as odd that a company should be automatically given privilege to the personal relationships of its employees. Maybe I'm not fully understanding the situation here but I cannot see any reason for why an employee's relationship with another employee should be of any concern to the company.
- rdl 14y agoCOO is not really "an employee".
- volaski 14y agoCOO actually IS an employee. Same goes for the CEO, unless they raised $0 investment.
- rdl 14y agoCOO is "an employee", but not really "just another employee". i.e. there is an entirely different level of responsibility (legal and moral/professional) for a corporate officer at that level, vs. a regular employee. I would counsel against but not fire engineers who were dating each other within a group (and, in a larger organization, if it's outside of a specific group, wouldn't be a problem. I think a good manager would give them each an opportunity to change roles so they're not directly working together.) In the intermediate case of a manager dating a direct report, the problem is with the manager, not the direct report. COO/founders/etc. don't get any slack for things like that, though, even if they are not directly managing the other relationship party.
- brown9-2 14y agoA company would want to know of a relationship outside of work in case there are conflicts at work between the two employees in the future. And because a reporting relationship between sexual partners is a bad idea. "I think we need to let X go" could take on a whole new context if the speaker was just dumped by X.
- spuz 14y agoOK, but I still don't see what HR could do in those cases with prior knowledge that they could not do with knowledge at the time an issue is raised. For example, if I have just been fired by the manager who I just dumped, I go to HR and have them resolve the situation then and explain the conflict of interest given that we were in a relationship. The manager is given a talking to, I keep my job and the situation is resolved. Please explain how this situation plays out differently under your rules.
- brown9-2 14y agoYou could reassign employees so that there is no reporting relationship which is a universally bad idea.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]