Workplace affairs can be toxic, divisive and disruptive so boss deservedd the big sack and fries
Most of us will have been in a situation, or know of one, where a manager at work embarks on a relationship with an employee, immediately changing the dynamic for the other members of staff.
Straight away there’s a loss of trust, both around the manager with whom you can no longer safely discuss anything that may relate to his or her new partner, and the colleague who will almost undoubtedly be passing information back to the boss they are dating.
Suddenly, you no longer feel free to discuss on the shop floor the issues and challenges that are part of working life.
Then there’s the issue of favouritism. How is that manager ever to make a sound and fair professional judgment around the individual they’re personally involved with?
When you piece all this together, you realise the strict policy operated by Mcdonald’s forbidding managers from having romantic relationships with direct or indirect employees is totally sensible.
When I first heard of Steve Easterbrook’s resignation as CEO after he admitted having an affair with a member of staff, my first response was that it didn’t sound a big deal if it was a relationship between consenting adults. But the more
I thought about the situations I myself had experienced, the quicker I realised just how big a problem his behaviour was.
Steve Easterbrook was in the most senior position of all, earning £12 million last year alone. He will have been fully aware of the policy and values of the company he was leading and he knew that he was breaching them when he embarked on an affair with an employee. The rumour mill must have been in overdrive.
If you fall for someone at work and it turns out to be serious, then one of you could get a new job and you’d be free to progress the relationship without compromising yourself and your colleagues.
In an age where fair and equal treatment of employees is rightly high on the agenda, bosses need to avoid anything that suggests favouritism. That includes appointing family members to your team.
I witnessed the fall-out of doing just that with a former chief executive of one of the tennis organisations who employed his daughter as his PA.
It raised immediate questions around transparency and the selection process, but no one could complain.
That Steve Easterbrook was forced out by a rule the company refused to waive, regardless of rank, shows that fairness won through in this case – and that it’s a policy worth having.