Your answer here may just be that it is organization specific, but something I’m keenly interested in is what the “X, Y and Z” from point 1 might look like. Questions come up here of a sort of federal vs state way of legislating how to navigate these, where a problem I see with your potential proposition is that it leaves the decisions in the hands of those who direct these various companies, potentially leading EA to (what I perceive to be) the predominant method of “X, Y and Z” being “romantic relationships are not allowed with colleagues”. But I think the spirit of your comment is otherwise equally amenable to a process I think more, which is the federal equivalent here of discussing the issue as a community and putting forth ideals based on that discussion for entities relating to EA, guiding principles, if you will, that can be deviated from but that set a standard. This also carries the benefit of helping us to create standards for non-work contexts like EAGs.
I see the next, most productive, outcropping of your comment to be figuring out what “X, Y and Z” should be, and not being experienced in this, would love to hear your thoughts about what might be reasonable.
Thanks Tristan. I outlined these briefly above but I think they are things like:
anyone in a relationship with anyone else is recused from all professional decision-making affecting that person. They can’t hire or fire them, they can’t conduct performance reviews, they can’t promote them, they can’t set their pay. They definitely shouldn’t be the decision-maker on these things, but ideally shouldn’t have input either—they just are not able to be impartial, and any process they fed into could easily be challenged as unfair (by their partner if they don’t get the outcome they want; or by someone else e.g. Person A got promoted and I didn’t, and it’s because Person A is sleeping with the CEO)
If a management relationship exists, it will be changed, so that no one is managed by their partner
If a funding relationship exists (e.g. a grantmaker is sleeping with their grantee), it will be changed, and that person/org’s applications will be assessed by someone else
Finally, I think there are some relationships that are highly likely to be de facto inappropriate (e.g. if I as CEO started a sexual relationship with a OFTW student volunteer), in which case X, Y and Z would include an investigation and disciplinary action. However, I am a little less certain of this, as I can see the ‘but if they are both consenting adults...’ line of argument.
Personally, I would definitely choose not to have any romantic involvement with a student, but I could imagine circumstances where this might happen with someone else and it might not be considered wrong (or not considered wrong by everybody). But in general I’m pretty unsympathetic to powerful people who sleep with people over whom they have power, so I tend to take a dim view of this sort of thing, and I’d be fairly comfortable saying this was inappropriate at OFTW.
Your answer here may just be that it is organization specific, but something I’m keenly interested in is what the “X, Y and Z” from point 1 might look like. Questions come up here of a sort of federal vs state way of legislating how to navigate these, where a problem I see with your potential proposition is that it leaves the decisions in the hands of those who direct these various companies, potentially leading EA to (what I perceive to be) the predominant method of “X, Y and Z” being “romantic relationships are not allowed with colleagues”. But I think the spirit of your comment is otherwise equally amenable to a process I think more, which is the federal equivalent here of discussing the issue as a community and putting forth ideals based on that discussion for entities relating to EA, guiding principles, if you will, that can be deviated from but that set a standard. This also carries the benefit of helping us to create standards for non-work contexts like EAGs.
I see the next, most productive, outcropping of your comment to be figuring out what “X, Y and Z” should be, and not being experienced in this, would love to hear your thoughts about what might be reasonable.
Thanks Tristan. I outlined these briefly above but I think they are things like:
anyone in a relationship with anyone else is recused from all professional decision-making affecting that person. They can’t hire or fire them, they can’t conduct performance reviews, they can’t promote them, they can’t set their pay. They definitely shouldn’t be the decision-maker on these things, but ideally shouldn’t have input either—they just are not able to be impartial, and any process they fed into could easily be challenged as unfair (by their partner if they don’t get the outcome they want; or by someone else e.g. Person A got promoted and I didn’t, and it’s because Person A is sleeping with the CEO)
If a management relationship exists, it will be changed, so that no one is managed by their partner
If a funding relationship exists (e.g. a grantmaker is sleeping with their grantee), it will be changed, and that person/org’s applications will be assessed by someone else
Finally, I think there are some relationships that are highly likely to be de facto inappropriate (e.g. if I as CEO started a sexual relationship with a OFTW student volunteer), in which case X, Y and Z would include an investigation and disciplinary action. However, I am a little less certain of this, as I can see the ‘but if they are both consenting adults...’ line of argument.
Personally, I would definitely choose not to have any romantic involvement with a student, but I could imagine circumstances where this might happen with someone else and it might not be considered wrong (or not considered wrong by everybody). But in general I’m pretty unsympathetic to powerful people who sleep with people over whom they have power, so I tend to take a dim view of this sort of thing, and I’d be fairly comfortable saying this was inappropriate at OFTW.