Thanks for writing this Amber. I pretty firmly disagree, but I’m upvoting it anyway because I think we need to discuss these issues in the open, and you’ve put across your point of view in a measured, reasonable way. I hope to draft a response soon with some alternative suggestions.
I think my main disagreement is that this is taking on a straw man argument. I’m not aware of anyone suggesting that we should “prevent people from forming relationships with whom they want”, at least not in the strong sense of “banning” relationships. Indeed, I’ve spoken recently to a couple of people with experience of managing these issues, and they all say “people are free to date whomever they want” (provided the usual caveats about it being fully consensual etc.).
What is being suggested is that there should be clear policies for how these relationships will be handled, to ensure a) the safety of those involved, especially the partner(s) with less power; and b) the safety of the community as whole. Those then give all parties the chance to make informed decisions about whom they form relationships with, and to give informed consent.
Accordingly, I think all EA orgs should adopt a clear “relationships at work” policy (and I hope to release a template for this soon). This wouldn’t say “you can’t date anyone from work”. But it would say:
1. If you have a nonprofessional relationship with someone at/directly related to work, we will actively manage any conflicts of interest, by doing X, Y and Z 2. If you have a nonprofessional relationship with someone at/directly related to work, you have to tell the relevant organisation(s) promptly so they can achieve (1) 3. You can’t use work time to advance your romantic interests, in particular by e.g. propositioning people 4. If you date someone at/related to work and there is a power imbalance, you have a particular duty to think very carefully about this, per @Peter Wildeford ‘s comment 5. Even when you aren’t on work time, we reserve the right for your actions to have professional consequences if they are plausibly harmful (e.g. if someone comes into work on a Monday and says you sexually harassed them on a Friday night, that’s not ‘off limits’ for professional consequences)
Part 1 would involve things like recusing anyone who has a nonprofessional relationship with someone else from any decision about their pay, promotions, disciplinary processes etc., to avoid the obvious conflict of interest here (I commented elsewhere that I am concerned by you saying you would only “probably” find someone a new manager if their current manager starts dating them, although I don’t want to focus in too hard on a single word).
It also involves removing them from decisions about funding, hiring etc. for indirect work relationships.
Part 5 might seem like the most draconian but is based on real examples of people who repeatedly sexually harassed colleagues, but because it happened ‘after hours’ it was never acknowledged or dealt with.
If orgs adopted a policy like this from the get-go, it would give everyone involved the chance to give informed consent—that is, they can understand exactly the consequences of their actions in advance and decide what works best for them. This isn’t “preventing people from forming relationships”—it’s allowing them to form relationships in an informed way.
You are right, of course, that this might lead to people not starting a relationship that they otherwise would have, but that’s just tough, I’m afraid—as other commentators have pointed out, this happens all the time in professional settings. Alternatively, they might choose to start the relationship anyway, and then they can choose whether to live with how that is managed or one or other person can seek a job elsewhere, in a different team etc..
Anyway, in sum, I think this is the steelman position, and I think its harms (maybe people have fewer relationships/less sex with people they work with) are greatly outweighed by its benefits (a healthier and safer workplace and community, which conforms to wider workplace norms).
Thanks Jack, I found this to be a very pragmatic and fair approach. Maybe the community health team could develop a suggested policy document for personal relationships within the professional context using this as a starting basis.
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.
Thanks for writing this Amber. I pretty firmly disagree, but I’m upvoting it anyway because I think we need to discuss these issues in the open, and you’ve put across your point of view in a measured, reasonable way. I hope to draft a response soon with some alternative suggestions.
(Also, as usual, @Peter Wildeford has made most of my points in his comment.)
I think my main disagreement is that this is taking on a straw man argument. I’m not aware of anyone suggesting that we should “prevent people from forming relationships with whom they want”, at least not in the strong sense of “banning” relationships. Indeed, I’ve spoken recently to a couple of people with experience of managing these issues, and they all say “people are free to date whomever they want” (provided the usual caveats about it being fully consensual etc.).
What is being suggested is that there should be clear policies for how these relationships will be handled, to ensure a) the safety of those involved, especially the partner(s) with less power; and b) the safety of the community as whole. Those then give all parties the chance to make informed decisions about whom they form relationships with, and to give informed consent.
Accordingly, I think all EA orgs should adopt a clear “relationships at work” policy (and I hope to release a template for this soon). This wouldn’t say “you can’t date anyone from work”. But it would say:
1. If you have a nonprofessional relationship with someone at/directly related to work, we will actively manage any conflicts of interest, by doing X, Y and Z
2. If you have a nonprofessional relationship with someone at/directly related to work, you have to tell the relevant organisation(s) promptly so they can achieve (1)
3. You can’t use work time to advance your romantic interests, in particular by e.g. propositioning people
4. If you date someone at/related to work and there is a power imbalance, you have a particular duty to think very carefully about this, per @Peter Wildeford ‘s comment
5. Even when you aren’t on work time, we reserve the right for your actions to have professional consequences if they are plausibly harmful (e.g. if someone comes into work on a Monday and says you sexually harassed them on a Friday night, that’s not ‘off limits’ for professional consequences)
Part 1 would involve things like recusing anyone who has a nonprofessional relationship with someone else from any decision about their pay, promotions, disciplinary processes etc., to avoid the obvious conflict of interest here (I commented elsewhere that I am concerned by you saying you would only “probably” find someone a new manager if their current manager starts dating them, although I don’t want to focus in too hard on a single word).
It also involves removing them from decisions about funding, hiring etc. for indirect work relationships.
Part 5 might seem like the most draconian but is based on real examples of people who repeatedly sexually harassed colleagues, but because it happened ‘after hours’ it was never acknowledged or dealt with.
If orgs adopted a policy like this from the get-go, it would give everyone involved the chance to give informed consent—that is, they can understand exactly the consequences of their actions in advance and decide what works best for them. This isn’t “preventing people from forming relationships”—it’s allowing them to form relationships in an informed way.
You are right, of course, that this might lead to people not starting a relationship that they otherwise would have, but that’s just tough, I’m afraid—as other commentators have pointed out, this happens all the time in professional settings. Alternatively, they might choose to start the relationship anyway, and then they can choose whether to live with how that is managed or one or other person can seek a job elsewhere, in a different team etc..
Anyway, in sum, I think this is the steelman position, and I think its harms (maybe people have fewer relationships/less sex with people they work with) are greatly outweighed by its benefits (a healthier and safer workplace and community, which conforms to wider workplace norms).
Thanks Jack, I found this to be a very pragmatic and fair approach. Maybe the community health team could develop a suggested policy document for personal relationships within the professional context using this as a starting basis.
And some version of point 5 is the employer’s legal obligation, at least under some circumstances in the US. E.g., this discussion:
https://everfi.com/blog/workplace-training/sexual-harassment-outside-of-work/
Yeah this is basically what I was trying to say in my comment.
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.