Employees and HR professionals alike often wonder…What should
we do about the collision between personal and professional when people to act like, well, people…at work, complete with flaws and bad judgement?
Enter exhibit A, Ron Artest. Artest is a Laker - that’s a basketball team
for those of you not so into the whole sports thing. But stay with me! Artest
has been rightfully characterized as a not so nice guy (for more, read Fear the Beard's rant). Why? Because a guy named Kyle Slavin, in the open and non-hierarchical
world of social media, decided to send an open letter to Artest, welcoming him
to the team and also giving him a bit of constructive feedback. Artest, rather
than ignoring it or providing an innocuous response, decided to say,
No law when it comes to me.
I let you type critics write and I just keep it hood.
That will never change.
I am not kissing no ones ass because I'm in LA. Suck a c***.
...Only, he didn't use stars for that last bit. Nice open door policy! I will say, after the guy said essentially, hey,
I am just trying to be helpful, Artest responded and apologized. But, Artest is
a person who does stupid stuff because he is not the sharpest tack in the pack.
And he doesn’t use apostrophe’s correctly, but that is beside the point. Needless
to say, the reactive HR people and lawyers at the NBA decided on Wednesday they’d better
get a policy out on social media asap. A
memo was sent to teams on Wednesday
telling them that cell phones and other communication devices can't be used
from 45 minutes before game time until after players have finished their
responsibilities after games, including halftime. I am not sure what this
changes. Is he going to be less likely to pop off an inappropriate response
when he’s not in the midst of a game? I suppose, at the very least, it ensure he’s
not screwing around during a game, which is something.
Most workplace policies were created because someone failed to exercise common sense, somewhere along the line. As an employee…what
do you think about this? Would you be cool with a policy that said no personal communication
(email, twitter, facebook, etc.) during work hours? As an employer…is this the
kind of policy you should implement in your workplace?
Exhibit B, the other
big news this week that had the HR “ouch!” written all over it, was David
Letterman’s multiple indiscretions with interns. Besides the fact that it’s
obnoxious and he’s gross and you can’t help but feel a tiny bit sorry for him
that this whole thing blew up the way it did, really did the world need to know about this…It begs the question: What is the
right and wrong about consensual relationships at work?
Some companies have a
policy against it (“it” being fraternization between employees), but imho that’s
sort of like telling the sun not to rise. So to speak. Adults are going to do
what they do. Whether the employers like it or not.
So as an employee,
how do you manage it when you can’t resist that relationship with a coworker? Do
you tell HR? A manager? Anyone? And as the employer…what do you do when you
find out one of your execs is, er, taking liberties with the help? Most companies do have some sort of policy around this, and rightly so...It really doesn't do to have people in a position of power wielding it in the bedroom and the boardroom.
I always
remind managers, at least, of the risks of lawsuits (which alas are very real).
Other than that…honestly, I have better things to do. It really is common sense driven. I’m sure that’s how
the bigwigs at CBS felt about Letterman until that guy decided he’d try
to make some money of the pathetic adventures of Letterman’s apparent ongoing midlife crisis. Interestingly, none of the women were complaining, or if they had, it had been brushed under the rug long ago.
Between Artest and Letterman, it’s clear that
there is one commonality: all it takes is one (or two) bad judgement calls to turn a harmless act
(i.e. email, sex, a tweet) into a very visible nightmare, creating a tsunami of policies from
the HR and Legal team to try to deal with it, not to mention damage control from the PR firm.
My advice? Use common sense, keep your hands to yourself, and don't go off in a way that would offend grandma...or the legal department. Don't be the person that causes yet one more policy to be written. I bet both Artest and Letterman are wishing right now that they weren't in that spot. But, they're both human, they'll probably make more mistakes, and they won't be alone. I call that...Job security.
tracy c