It's our goal to ensure employee relationships are friendly and conducive to productive work, and are not overly distracted by personal issues. If a relationship occurs between employees that makes it difficult for those employees to work together at a professional level, action will be taken to move one of the employees out of that team or even the department.

Dating managers

In order to avoid the risk of any bias, we do not allow staff to maintain a romantic relationship with their managers, whether direct or indirect. Should this situation arise, one of the staff members will be asked to move out of the department so that they are no longer under the manager or no longer overseeing the staff member.

Friendships at work

While friendships at work are encouraged, we understand that sometimes friendships can result in disputes. If this occurs, we ask that you keep any such disputes out of the work environment.

Employment of relatives

Because of the risk of accusations of bias, we place restrictions on the hiring of close relatives into the same department or team.

A “close relative” is someone related to an employee by blood or  marriage, within the third degree. This will include: parents, grandparents, in-laws, spouses or domestic partners, children, grandchildren, siblings, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, step-parents, step-children and adopted children.

A close relative must not be involved in a manager relationship with a relative. This means that we cannot have a manager and subordinate who are closely related.

Also, if you are involved in hiring then you cannot hire, or suggest for hire, someone who is a close relative to you.

If it is determined that such a situation has arisen after a departmental transfer, we may have to transfer one of you to a different department or otherwise deal with the situation.