Workforce Management
By Sheila Anne Feeney
Romance may be in the air at your company, but passion can have its price. You might encounter million-dollar lawsuits, productivity drops and even an impact on profitability. Dating policies are one answer, but even they might not save your company from the turmoil of office love gone bad.
In October 2000, Robert Barbee, national sales manager for Household Automotive Finance Corp., began dating a member of HAFC’s sales force. Two months later, the company’s CEO warned him that his choice of partners was "a bad idea." Company policy stipulated that if a supervisor wanted to have a relationship with any subordinate, it was his responsibility to bring it to management’s attention "for appropriate action, i.e., possible reassignment to avoid a conflict of interest."
But when Barbee was asked about the nature of his relationship with Melanie Tomita in March 2001, he wasn’t given an option to transfer. He was told that if he and Tomita didn’t discontinue their relationship, one or the other would be terminated. Barbee informed his superiors that both he and Tomita wished to stay on at HAFC. That seemed to be that--until the CEO discovered that Barbee had used tickets given to him by a client to take Tomita to a basketball game.
Full Story: http://www.workforce.com/archive/feature/23/62/31/index.php
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