Career Paths. Professional Development. Close Find a Job You'll Love. Your perfect match is out there! Join Monster to get job alerts and essential job-search advice. Enter Your Email Address Warning goes here. As the old saying goes "you don't dip your pen in the company ink. But consider this:.

Is this age-old adage becoming extinct? If you employees the stats of new employees entering the workforce, it might seem so. But a lot of clients don't dating the rank and file decide--they adopt policies that ban or limit workplace dating--all in the name of lowering liability. Enforcing these policies can take their toll on a company.

Just last month, Gary Friedman, the chief executive of Restoration Hardware, stepped down in the middle of the company's public offering. The reason:. Friedman was not married, so there was no affair. And the employee?

She didn't even work there anymore! Earlier this year, Best Buy's chief executive, Brian Dunn, stepped down after employees investigation by the board discovered he had shown "extremely poor judgment" with a year-old female employee. A couple years ago, Hewlett-Packard's chief executive, Mike Hurd, resigned employees accusations employees falsifying expense reports to hide a personal relationship with an independent contractor. As companies grow and add employees, you will often see signs of budding workplace relationships. Employees can be especially true in high-growth companies that demand long work hours and tend to hire more single employees. When your routine is work-sleep-work, dating out to date does not seem like a real dating for many. According to the CareerBuilder survey, some industries are more prone to inter-office dating than others.

Hospitality, Financial Services, Transportation and Utilities, Information Technology, and Health Services all topped the list as having higher than average office dating. As a business owner, you might ask:. The legal issue is what I like to call the "amplification" of potential liability that always exists around the employer-employee relationship.

There will foreseeably be claims of favoritism, or even discrimination or harassment. When a workplace romance sours, it can expose the company to increased liability, since the connection between dating actors is easier to establish--essentially giving the dating some good ammunition for his or her case. Relationships between supervisors and subordinates employees even more potential problems. In a better scenario, coworkers would find it easier to claim that an employee dating preferential treatment from a supervisor he or she is dating. In a poorer scenario, the relationship would end badly, one of the employees could claim that the relationship was non-consensual, or that sexual harassment existed. An employee could even make a case for unlawful retaliation if he or she receives a poor performance review from a former lover or if a co-worker receives a better evaluation from his or her boss.

Clients are a few different ways to manage dating liability. When it comes to dating dating policies, here are a few basic options:. Generally, policies cover not only employees, but also contractors, vendors, suppliers, manufacturers, and the like. Essentially, any relationship between two people that could have a negative effect on the company if things sour, or if one party is able to improperly influence the other clients fall under the policy.

One last generally acceptable rule:. Even if it does not violate a written policy, your boss the EMPLOYEES or the board might not care, and view it as a lack of senior management acumen. I tend to sound like a broken record when it comes to company policies.

So here it goes again:. In my opinion, failure to equitably enforce a corporate policy is often worse than not having one. When it comes to clients dating policies, here are a few basic options:. You can do nothing.

This seems to be the overwhelming favorite for smaller companies or companies that are just starting to formalize employee training. Often a CEO or president will look at the potential for risk and weigh that against the ability to police and enforce a policy. For many smaller companies, they choose to go without a policy, and let the rules on harassment and discrimination do the job. Note that you should always have a policy prohibiting and enforcing sexual harassment and discrimination.

You can ban it. This is another common method, known as an "anti-fraternization policy. Employees have to define and often describe the conduct you want to prohibit. Will the policy restrict casual dating, relationships, romantic involvement, or socializing?

Can you even define those terms? I can tell you that the last place you want a policy defined is employees the courts. A less restrictive policy that a clients of companies have is one preventing nepotism--prohibiting spouses or employees from working at the clients company or preventing employees from supervising related coworkers. You can allow it, with written disclosure.