Revelation: Why my wife is self employed – Comedian, Salvado
Mating between co-workers, and extramarital affairs in the workplace tend to cause a lot of gossip, backstabbing and fading respect (for leaders), among others.
What is known, however, is that married couples usually have side kicks at work.
“Every working class “corporate” married woman has a lover at work .. and the husband usually has no idea bse he’s also with his lover at work,” comedian and actor, Patrick ‘Salvado’ Idringi tweeted Tuesday afternoon.
A twitterer joked under the man from Ombokolo’s tweet that the comical man’s wife be tagged.
Salvador was quick to respond: Heheh that’s why she’s self employed .. the things I witnessed in the corporate world I said I have to work with my wife.
Joe Flanagan, senior career advisor at Los Angeles-based Mint Resume, says that “People have lots of opinions about things like that—moral judgments about whether it’s right or wrong,” said Mark Kluger, founding partner at employment law firm Kluger Healey in Fairfield, N.J. “To the extent that this affects the workplace … [that may] have some impact on how an employer deals with it.”
“It will affect the working environment,” he added. “That’s because an extramarital affair is a controversial issue that may [lead] to employees gossiping and backstabbing, which is never good. It may affect the performance of both the involved and uninvolved employees.”
Some employers might want to create policies to prohibit romantic relationships at work—or even to specifically prohibit extramarital affairs.
Revelation: Why my wife is self employed – Comedian, Salvado
While creating “no fraternization” or “no romantic relationship” policies may seem like a good idea, they can create a different set of challenges.
David Reischer, attorney and CEO of LegalAdvice.com, notes that “an absolute ‘no dating’ policy is hard to enforce.”
Kluger agrees. “I recommend against them, frankly, because I don’t think you can keep two people apart if they want to be together,” he said. “And if there’s an employer rule against relationships among co-workers or subordinates and supervisors, it’s just going to be broken. You essentially almost encourage your employees to lie to you by having a rule prohibiting consensual relationships at work.”
Instead, he said, it’s better for an employer to encourage employees to be upfront and honest and to disclose when there are relationships.
If an extramarital affair is causing turmoil at work, a manager may have some obligation to investigate, Kluger said.
“That’s a little bit sensitive and tricky because the employer really would need to have some kind of evidence that there are public displays of affection or things that are … making employees uncomfortable,” he noted.
“As a manager or HR [staffer], noticing subtle and not-so-subtle behavioral changes among your employees as a result of a romance is part of your job,” said Ellen Mullarkey, vice president of Messina Staffing, a national search, staffing and consulting firm based in Chicago. “The best thing to do is to keep an eye on the people involved.”
Flanagan said managers “should have proof or evidence regarding the affair before confronting the employees involved because without it, it is merely an accusation.”
“I would advise the employer to ask the parties involved what’s going on and to really keep it focused on how it impacts the workplace,” said Debra Johnson, assistant general counsel and human resources consultant at Hollywood, Fla.-based Engage PEO, which provides HR solutions for small and midsize businesses. “If there are any policies that prohibit romantic relationships in the workplace at that particular jobsite, then I would always advise the employer to make sure that it uniformly enforces those policies. If you do have a policy, make sure that it’s not invading privacy.”
Whether to discipline someone for an extramarital affair depends largely on what the company’s policy is about romantic relationships at work.
“No disciplinary action should be taken if no company policy has been violated because, married or single, your employees have a right to privacy,” Mullarkey said. “This changes should the employees having the romantic relationship do something that violates company policy.”
If the workers having the affair violate policy, employers can reassign the employees, especially if one is supervising the other, Johnson said.
Revelation: Why my wife is self employed – Comedian, Salvado
“If there are any allegations that are shown to be true of favoritism, sexual harassment or any inappropriate intimate contact in the workplace, you definitely want to address that with the appropriate disciplinary action,” she added. “But often in these situations, all that’s needed is coaching or potentially reassigning employees.”
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Additional reporting by Elaina Loveland, a freelance writer based in northern Virginia via SHRM
