Blog

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, it’s a good time for employers to review workplace dating policies. Everything is great with an office romance, until it isn’t. Many business owners have learned the hard way that office relationships can negatively impact the workplace in a number of ways, including favoritism concerns, conflicts of interest, as well as sexual harassment and retaliation complaints. Employers should absolutely “get involved” in all office romances and set boundaries in the workplace to prevent harassment and retaliation complaints.

Just three years after the #MeToo Movement, Governor Cuomo is under fire as multiple accusers have come forward with complaints of sexual harassment. Cuomo has denied all allegations and apologized for making "people feel uncomfortable." This begs the question: after the #MeToo Movement, is workplace harassment the "exception" or "status quo?" And, as HR professionals, how should we respond?

Everything is great with an office romance, until it isn't. With Valentine's Day around the corner, it's a good time for employers to review workplace dating policies. Many business owners have learned the hard way that office relationships can negatively impact the workplace in a number of ways, including favoritism concerns, conflicts of interest, and even sexual harassment and retaliation complaints.

"If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Yes! The same answer holds true for harassment. Whether harassment happens at an in-person happy hour event or in an online virtual happy hour, it still happens.

Two employees at a 99 Cents Only store in Redding alleged that an assistant manager sexually assaulted them in a walk-in freezer, and the store retaliated against them after they complained. The DFEH recently reached a settlement of $1.2 million in this matter.

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission estimates that 75% of all workplace harassment incidents go unreported. Oftentimes this occurs because the would-be-reporter is afraid of retaliation. In other words, the ‘kill the messenger’ syndrome is alive and well in bullying, as it is in sexual harassment.