OGDEN, Utah -
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, Credit Union Journal surveyed various credit unions about their romance-in-the workplace policies.
“We have a quite a few employees who have met and married. We are quite proud of that,” said Ken Streuling, vice president of human resources at America First Credit Union here, and chair of CUNA’s HR/TD Council. “But we are also very careful about dealing with issues when they arise.”
America First CU does have a policy on workplace romances, published in its handbook–“Two employees who marry or become related after they are employed may be permitted to continue to work, but not in a direct supervisory relationship with one another or in the same branch or department. The credit union will try to find a suitable position within the company where one of the individuals could be transferred.”
“In addition, we teach in our sexual harassment and tolerance class issues dealing with this, as well,” Streuling said. “We do not have a formal policy prohibiting people from dating each other. But should someone cross the line after they are told ‘no’ to such advances that is then becomes a sexual harassment issue and HR will deal with it.”
Tammy Trudell, vice president of human resources at Fort Worth Community Credit Union in Bedford, Texas, and a member of CUNA’s HR/TD Council, said her credit union does not have a written policy on employee dating.
“We deemed it ‘how would we enforce it?’” she said. “Workplace romances aren’t encouraged, but we don’t have a policy.”
Like America First CU though, at Fort Worth Community CU there are rules if the couple gets married, as this conflicts with the policy on relatives working together.
“We’ve had to transfer someone before to another branch,” Trudell said.
This is especially important if one of the employees is a member of senior management. However, most of the workplace romances don’t involve senior management, Trudell said. And usually they’re not in the same departments.
“It’s usually something like a member-service representative and an employee in the collections department,” she said.
America First Credit Union has also seen employees date the CU’s security officers, which are usually off-duty police officers. The problem here is that those security officers are usually married, Trudell said.
“We once had a screaming wife here in the lobby trying to figure out who her husband was dating,” she said.
Coast Capital Savings Credit Union in Surrey, B.C., has had better luck with its workplace romances.
“We have a story of about four of our employees who were involved in extra-curricular sports activities,” said Amanda Fenton, senior human resources adviser for Coast Capital Savings CU.
Of those four employees, two couples were formed. Now eight years later, both couples are married and have children.
“And they all still work here, but in different departments,” Fenton said. “We certainly like to celebrate when two people fall in love. So we don’t say ‘That can’t happen here.’”
The only exceptions are situations that may fall under the company’s conflict-of-interest policy. “This is a fairly open policy that states that our obligation as employees is we need to be aware of what could be a conflict of interest,” Fenton said. This may include a reporting position. In these cases, sometimes an employee is simply switched to a different department, Fenton said.
One credit union offered some tongue-and-cheek quotes, with a laugh.
“At Enrichment FCU we ask our employees to just say no!” said Nancy Donsback, vice president of human resources and branch administration at Enrichment Federal Credit Union in Oak Ridge, Tenn. “Or using the Bonnie Raitt song as inspiration, instead of ‘let’s give them something to talk about’–how about when talking about employee romance, ‘why give them something to talk about?”
* www.americafirst.com
* www.cuna.org
* www.ftwccu.org
* www.k25fcu.org
* www.coastcapitalsavings.com
