Over the past month, discourse has swirled around Twitter regarding the departure of Ned Fulmer from the Try Guys, a content production collective. News broke that Fulmer had engaged in a consensual affair with one of the company’s production assistants. Apart from the implications for Fulmer’s family, many social media users discussed the ethics of workplace relationships.
HR managers often aren’t opposed to workplace relationships; however, in creating workplace romance policies, many people officers have had to grapple with the nuances of co-worker flirting, power dynamics and sexual harassment. The #MeToo movement, which was kicked off in 2006 by Tarana Burke, experienced a revival in 2017 as many women began to speak out about the sexual harassment pervasive in their workplaces.
With the Try Guys controversy simmering and the anniversary of the #MeToo movement’s explosion into the popular consciousness approaching, here are some past stories from HR Dive (some of them close to the #MeToo era’s beginning) regarding the complicated dynamics of sexual expression, the pursuit of romance and gender-based violence at work.
