"Tell us who you're sleeping with"

Late yesterday afternoon, news reached the Big Brother Watch team of a report which will soon be placed in front of Fenland District councillors which seeks to place restrictions upon "close personal relationships" in the workplace.

According to the report, which will be examined by the council's Staff Committee, council employees who are engaged in relationships with other members of staff must "declare the relationship to his/her manager in writing" with the information then being "recorded on the personal files of both employees" and shared across the HR department. Failure to comply with the rules will be treated as a disciplinary offence.

Big Brother Watch's view on this is simple: people should not be expected to divulge details about their personal circumstances to their employers. Quite apart from the fact it's wrong for Fenland District Council to build up this kind of database, what people do in their own time is up to them. If people are good at their jobs, they should be left alone – regardless of who they share their bed with at the end of the day.

The full "relationships at work" report can be accessed here.

Big Brother Watch Campaign Director Daniel Hamilton will be discussing this issue on BBC Look East at 1:30pm today.

Comments

[sayno]

I wonder how they define close personal relationship??? Whilst one can understand the need to ensure recruitment processes are not being unfairly influenced there is also need to ensure that the employers are not discriminating against people in the workplace.

Resorting to making employees put details of any close relationships they might have in writing so they can be added to their personnel files does not seem right on so many levels. That brings us back to how they define close personal relationships. And vitally important - who would have access to this information?

[Andrew Taylor]

If it were time for me to move on, and my bosses wife worked at the council. I would write to him and tell him I was sleeping with his wife.

The bleddy cheek of it!

[Joss]

It's worth noting that it's only close relationships within a given team that would be reported, not relationships with any other council employee.

This is still an absolutely unacceptable intrusion into personal life, but not quite as far-reaching as might be inferred from the article.

[alastair]

This is an interesting one; I don't think, FWIW, that the kind of thing you're talking about here is all that uncommon in employment contracts, and I think in some cases there may be an argument in favour of disclosure of workplace relationships to your employer. For instance, if you were working in a bank, and two employees held keys for the bank vault, then the bank has a legitimate concern about those two employees being more than just colleagues and might want to change one of the keyholders if that happened.

So I think you have to be a little careful to decry this kind of thing as *always* unacceptable, though there should certainly be a damned good reason if you're going to impose any kind of relationship ban. It's a fair bet that there isn't one in this case…

[David C]

From my experience of local government, I would expect that this policy has been agreed at high level within the authority, and that it has been designed to embarrass, and probably cause the resignation of, certain individuals who are known to be having a (probably illicit) relationship. A council like Fenland isn't suddenly going to draw up a policy like this out of the blue.

[John]

I don't see what the trouble is all about. In the private sector this kind of policy is not at all uncommon where couples work in close proximity or within a management line.

For example in banking where one person's job is to create a financial transaction and another has to independantly verify it before it can go ahead it's essential to ensure independance to avoid potential fraud.

Within management lines it also avoids any possibility of favoritism.

Storm in a teacup. Put your Daily Mail away.

[Chris]

il·lic·it/iˈlisit/
Adjective: Forbidden by law, rules, or custom

Alistair, are you or the Council the Judge and Jury of what is 'illicit' or will this be left to some Council functionary to decide? I don't think there is any Law against relationships and Customs clealry change with time but I do think that Rulemakers are becoming the scourge of our society.

I think we have far too many rukes and far to many people whi want to stick their noses into other peoples business.

We apear to be far to tolerant and make too many excuses for busy bodies.

As for banks assuming people in relationships are more likely to be dishonest than any other individual is another example of the type of BS we have to live with.

[Dual Citizen]

I don't see any issue with this; indeed it's very sensible.

My company (publicly traded in the US) has precisely this policy. It's to prevent any conflict-of-interest arising in work related issues such as performance reviews, pay rises and disclosure of other employees' confidential information. Indeed my company has a clause such that if a suitable transfer to another department is not possible, one of the parties will be compelled to resign (without prejudice).

I know of such a case involving two co-workers/friends, and their relationship was causing concern within their department. Fortunately the VP of the division resolved the situation and found an alternative position for one of them - the woman - and she has thrived in the her new role; both she and he are director level in separate departments.

[rc]

My employers have a similar policy. I have made it clear to them that, as a matter of principle, I will never divulge the details of my private life to anyone attempting to coerce me into doing so. This places me in open defiance of my employers' policy, which however they have not sought to implement.