In particular, among the things you think are clearly a risk are several situations that I do not think orgs should have on their risk list unless there are other external reasons [...]
Date coworkers if there is no reporting issue or power differentials
Hmm if you have a five-person org, I feel like it straightforwardly is a risk factor if one of the employees date each other. This is true even if both of them are individual contributors, there are no power differentials, etc.
It matters much less (arguably ~0) at say Google’s scale if a random data analyst working on Google Ads is dating a random software engineer working on Google Cloud. I’m not sure where the cutoff is, anything from 20 to 200 seems defensible to me.
You might believe that the ceteris paribus risk is not worth correcting for due to other values or pragmatics (professionalism norms against intruding on employees’ personal lives; thinking that the costs of breaking up a relationship is greater than the benefits you gain from the reduced organizational risk[1], etc). But it absolutely is a risk.
Perhaps we could change the wording from “Date coworkers” to something like “Date people you work with.” After all, the former phrasing allows dating a vendor or a contractor, while prohibiting a random data analyst working on Google Ads from dating a random software engineer working on Google Cloud.
This also brings to mind time, where it seems like projects and roles are uncorrelated enough right now that it’s fine to date, but two years of unforeseen career developments between the two of you create something like a formal power asymmetry. Are you obligated to redteam dates with respect to where your respective careers might end up in the future?
Hmm if you have a five-person org, I feel like it straightforwardly is a risk factor if one of the employees date each other. This is true even if both of them are individual contributors, there are no power differentials, etc.
It matters much less (arguably ~0) at say Google’s scale if a random data analyst working on Google Ads is dating a random software engineer working on Google Cloud. I’m not sure where the cutoff is, anything from 20 to 200 seems defensible to me.
You might believe that the ceteris paribus risk is not worth correcting for due to other values or pragmatics (professionalism norms against intruding on employees’ personal lives; thinking that the costs of breaking up a relationship is greater than the benefits you gain from the reduced organizational risk[1], etc). But it absolutely is a risk.
for starters, I expect a reasonable fraction of those conversations to end with one of the employees quitting the company.
Perhaps we could change the wording from “Date coworkers” to something like “Date people you work with.” After all, the former phrasing allows dating a vendor or a contractor, while prohibiting a random data analyst working on Google Ads from dating a random software engineer working on Google Cloud.
This also brings to mind time, where it seems like projects and roles are uncorrelated enough right now that it’s fine to date, but two years of unforeseen career developments between the two of you create something like a formal power asymmetry. Are you obligated to redteam dates with respect to where your respective careers might end up in the future?