4/3/2008
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Employment Relations Today: Questions-and Answers Column (Vol. 35, Issue 1 - Spring 2008) By Lynn Lieber, Esq.
A 7-page article published in Employment Relations Today
is excerpted below. Reprints are available online at Wiley InterScience.
Recent, high-profile cases in the news have all too clearly shown the dangers to an organization when a workplace relationship is unexpectedly exposed or untangles badly. Such romances can lead to very negative publicity, sexual harassment claims, and even criminal charges, particularly when the relationship involves an executive and a subordinate. Add to that the ramifications that office romance can have on employee productivity, retention, and motivation, and you have the making of an HR nightmare.
WHY IS OFFICE ROMANCE SO DANGEROUS?
Workplace romance gone awry is very costly for employers—in both financial and other resources. A sex scandal in the news involving the organization can have implications that can plague the employer for years, or even cause it to go out of business. Sexual harassment lawsuits can quickly eat up corporate time and resources. Such cases are very hard to defend legally because there is always a dispute of fact (one person’s word against another), making it difficult to use the legal procedures for early case dismissal. Employers generally do not want to go to a jury trial on such a volatile issue with the inherent risks of a jury.
WHAT ARE SOME NEGATIVE IMPLICATIONS OF WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIPS?
Three recent situations in the news demonstrate the many personal and organizational dangers of workplace sexual relationships. In early January 2008, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick found himself in the midst of a spiraling, out-of-control sex scandal. A series of steamy text messages between Kilpatrick and his chief of staff, Christine Beatty, demonstrate strong evidence of an illicit sexual relationship between them. Both Kilpatrick and Beatty had denied any sort of sexual relationship in testimony last summer during a “police whistle-blower” trial. A prosecutor is investigating whether to bring perjury charges against them. Beatty resigned, and the city council is considering auditing the mayor’s office. Kilpatrick admitted the scandal had an “incredible impact” that was “negative” for the city.
Late last year, the chief executive officer of the American Red Cross (ARC), Mark Everson, was forced to resign after he was caught in a sexual relationship with a woman who worked for him as a regional director. The ARC is undertaking a forensic audit of money spent by Everson to determine whether any of the charity’s money was used inappropriately as he romanced the married female subordinate who is now reportedly pregnant. The scandal arose at a time during which the ARC was already battling negative publicity and unstable management. Everson was the ARC’s eighth CEO or interim CEO in 12 years.
Exposed office romances, or those that become unwelcome, can leave a wide trail of negative publicity for the organization, sometimes even affecting the financial and competitive viability of the organization itself. Add in the cost of defending lawsuits, large jury verdict awards, the drain of time and corporate resources, poor employee morale, and the overall consequences of one romance gone awry can be staggering.
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WHAT ACTIONS CAN HR TAKE TO PREVENT A SEX-RELATED CORPORATE CATASTROPHE OR LAWSUIT?
Statistically, 53 percent of intimate employee relationships end within one year, and 84 percent of these relationships end within five years, according to a study conducted by MSNBC.com. Therefore, the majority of intimate employee relationships will end, with the potential to cause any number of problems for the organization, not to mention for the employees involved.
Fortunately, HR professionals can take steps to set workplace policies that can lessen the risk of damage resulting from a workplace romance gone awry. Instituting and maintaining policies that specify correct behavior between employees and routinely and consistently enforcing those policies will help make it clear to employees what is at stake when romantic relationships are brought to the workplace. Conducting training regarding the policies to all levels of the organization is also important.
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WHAT TYPES OF TRAINING WILL REDUCE RELATIONSHIP-RELATED LIABILITY?
All organizations should conduct training for the entire employee population on unlawful harassment prevention, including the organization’s policies and procedures on workplace relationships, on at least a yearly basis. New hires should be trained at the onset of employment. In the past, conducting such training has been administratively challenging for many HR departments, but it has become much easier to deploy and administer such ongoing training with the rise in usage of Web-based training. Again, such training should be comprehensive and cover all the protected categories, not just sexual harassment.
Supervisors should be regularly trained in their dual obligations to both follow their organization’s no-harassment policy and administer the policy in the workplace. Supervisors should also be trained to assist in identifying, receiving, and reporting harassment claims to HR. Their training should clearly specify the organization’s policy on intimate workplace relationships and the steps that must be followed in enforcing the policy. Senior employees need to understand that the organization’s policies apply to them and that the consequences for violating the policies could be personally devastating, as well as catastrophic for their organization.
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Excerpted from the 10-page article published in Employment Relations Today.
Reprints of the full article are available at Wiley InterScience.