Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters [LWN.net]

Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters

Posted Aug 15, 2012 18:57 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953)
In reply to: Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters by mpr22
Parent article: Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters

Allow me to clarify. The best policy I ever saw was at my former employer (a fortune 500).

1. Coworkers are not allowed to date without a dating contract, dating without informing your line manager is grounds for termination.

2. IF both people desire to date (you have to follow the sex harassment policy here, asking once is fine, more than that and you cross the boundary to harassment), they must go to their line managers and put in motion the following steps:

A. Both parties sign dating contracts with their managers explaining the rules about supervision and such and that if things do not work out what will happen and what the consequences will be if it turns bad.

B. While dating, both parties are bared from being in a supervisory role of each other and preference will be given to working on separate teams (even if that impacts career opportunity). If that interferes with promotions that is the cost of the relationship. If one party is promoted to a role that would require supervising the other party said party will be moved to another department or position.

C. If the dating does not work out there will be a very strict line about harassment. This means is one party has hurt feelings and begins to bring up personal information at work to harass the other person they will be warned and if it continues they will be fired. Any ongoing harassment or unwanted non-work related attention will result in the same consequences.

D. If either party is cannot work with the person they were dating (where there isn't harassment, they just won't work with them) the company will try to make arrangement for a transfer but if there is no opening or equivalent position then it may be grounds for termination.

Almost everyone thinks dating should be fine, that is until they start thinking about what happens if it works out or what happens if it doesn't work out and one of the parties starts acting like a child. Dating should be absolutely prohibited without a contract explaining the terms if for no other reason than to protect people from the nasty career consequences. Keep in mind when the dating goes bad its quite common for one party to start harassing the other party in way that quickly creates the legal definition of a hostile workplace.

People also tend to forget the impact on other coworkers and how disruptive dating is to the work atmosphere. Two people giving each other googly eye's disrupts the other workers and hurts productivity and when it goes bad it makes the atmosphere so uncomfortable productivity drops and the best people will start looking for other jobs. Any interoffice dating is very disruptive and it should be heavily discouraged.

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Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters

Posted Aug 15, 2012 22:10 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

Are you sure that policy was applied world wide? Your summary to me seems like a USA policy, applied only there and maybe Canada.

e.g. in .nl, I consider most of these items to be personal. A company thinking they can dictate what I do privately? Urgh! I think there is an unwritten rule, that is when two people are dating and one is directly or indirectly reporting to the other person.

I have no problems with rules about what happens during work.

Personal note: I think at one point the company I work for had 9 known couples out of 140 people or so. 140 is not the total size of the company.

Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters

Posted Aug 17, 2012 16:30 UTC (Fri) by efraim (subscriber, #65977) [Link]

Hardly see anything funny here. Sounds like sensible, if strict, policy.
Nobody forces you to expose your private live - there are just requirements to make sure you can do your job properly. Probably part of your employment contract.

Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters

Posted Aug 24, 2012 17:34 UTC (Fri) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link]

As some other people already indicated, that policy would be likely considered harassment by your employer here, that's how "sensible" it is...

Who you date is part of your private life, and as such it's legally forbidden (in many/most jurisdictions here in Europe) for your employer to force you to disclose this. Except in special situations, but a labour judge would only accept that for proportionally serious reasons. Proportional means that the more your privacy gets violated, the stronger the reason for it has to be. In this policy there is a very invasive violation of your privacy which is mostly unnecessary and ineffective. There is too much "collateral damage".

Of course a company can make rules about the requirement to report a conflict of interest when it happens, but that's something entirely different (not every relationship causes one, and they can occur because of other reasons too). Same goes about harassment: of course a company can make a policy about that, but it should target harassment, and not innocent bystanders.

Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters

Posted Aug 27, 2012 19:11 UTC (Mon) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

> Nobody forces you to expose your private live

?! What about "Coworkers are not allowed to date without a dating contract, dating without informing your line manager is grounds for termination." ???

This seems like *forcing* (under penalty of termination) someone to *expose* (informing your line manager) your *private life* (dating).

> there are just requirements to make sure you can do your job properly.

Adults can do their job properly even if they work with their dates/spouses.

> Probably part of your employment contract.

Probably not, in any part of the planet that isn't the USofA, and this is the reason I think this is IMMENSELY funny. In many countries this clauses are just illegal, null and void; in others, the attempt to enforce rules like those can be construed as harassment, with criminal penalties.

Dating coworkers

Posted Aug 28, 2012 1:53 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Note that, while dating is a private matter, marriage is a public affair. Companies in e.g. Spain can regulate the roles for married couples: both spouses sometimes cannot work in the same area, or one reporting to the other, and so on. But I have never heard of a company where they tried to regulate private dating. (I worked in one place where dating coworkers was frowned upon, but of course not grounds for termination.)