Disciplining employees for conduct outside of work can be tricky
territory and highly dependent on the specific nature of the
incident. Consider both of the following scenarios. At an after
hours dinner following a company annual meeting, several off color
jokes are told about the shape of food on employees' entrees
after a few rounds of margaritas. Everyone is laughing at the jokes
and no one reports being uncomfortable with the conversation. Since
attendance is required, almost all employees are there, including
human resources employees. What should they do?
In the second scenario, employees playing on the company
softball team go for happy hour after the game. An employee starts
coming on to a co-worker and, after she rebuffs his advances, the
co-worker follows her home and repeatedly knocks on her door asking
to come in. At work the following Monday, she tells another
co-worker about the incident but says it didn't happen on work
time and she doesn't want to
