February 6, 2023 | Carole Walters

Employee Benefit News – In this article on office romances in a remote/hybrid environment, Maggie Smith, Traliant’s Senior Vice President of HR, discusses why it’s important for employers to update their policies and have conversations with teams to remind them that the same rules apply.

Here’s an excerpt:

Companies should update codes of conduct to ensure that they are as effective and comprehensive as when employees were in the office. That means expanding written policies to include Zoom and Slack and other programs that may create new opportunities for unprofessional exchanges. As relationships are harder for managers to spot in remote settings, adjusting policies to relationship disclosure is also vital.

“No one ever enters a relationship thinking how it could go badly,” says Maggie Smith, vice president of HR at Traliant. “That’s certainly not the goal — but in order to avoid it, companies will have to be really mindful of their employees’ interactions at work so that they’re still professional.” 

Read the full article