Why, you ask yourself, would anyone want to work for ITV? The company has finally responded to criticism about its blind-eye policy to Phillip Schofield’s relationship with a much younger employee by getting all totalitarian.
It is to oblige its employees to disclose their relationships with other members of staff, not just familial, marital or quasi-marital, but “anyone involved in a sexual, romantic or close relationship or friendship (whether short or longer term)”. It includes relationships that started prior to employment at ITV.
ITV has already sent round a Google form questionnaire to staff, requiring full disclosure. Look, I go to confession in church every so often; it’s light-touch and non-invasive by comparison.
I am perhaps fortunate in that I’d regard lots of my colleagues as friends. Would I have to confess to drinking sessions with the cartoonist?
I am trying, and failing, to think how this thing would work in practice. I am perhaps fortunate in that I’d regard lots of my colleagues as friends. Would I have to confess to drinking sessions with the cartoonist? I am also friendly with some of the paper’s contributors: how many do you have to list before the thing becomes unworkable?
And how far up the hierarchy does the disclosure apply? Julie Burchill’s novel about journalism, Ambition, begins with an editor having relations with an employee in his office — based, apparently, on a former editor of this paper, the late Stewart Steven. Well, I worked for him and he was a brilliant editor; he may have had human frailties. Try making the boss fill in a form.
The only time there is actually a problem with relations between colleagues is when one party can use his or her power to compel someone to have sex or to reward him or her for it. I’ve known that happen too. But that’s it.
Human nature being what it is, you can’t expect relationships not to develop in an office. I can think of at least four marriages between colleagues, and one sacking on that basis.
And how are the HR bigwigs meant to handle all this disclosure? Are they the guardians of workplace morals? All I can say is if that database should ever go public, it will be — for most journalists — like all their Christmases coming at once.
