“Professional Boundaries”: Female Employees Say Male Boss Refuses to Meet Them Alone Unless Another Man Is Present

Posting on Reddit's r/LegalAdviceUK, a woman detailed how her male boss implemented a policy affecting meetings with female employees. Apparently, he doesn't meet with female employees one-on-one unless there is another man present. Even then, the door of the room they are meeting in remains open. Understandably, people on the platform had a lot to say.

The poster says that this male manager joined the company about three months ago and, since then, has implemented this policy.

According to it, only female employees have to arrange appointments with him and also find a male colleague to attend. On the other hand, what women in this company find hard to believe is that male employees have no such obligation and are therefore able to meet with management without the same restrictions. Some employees viewed the policy as gender discrimination. 

Not only did this new policy make the women feel “incredibly [infantilized]”, but it also put them in a tough spot. There are several confidential conversations that one needs to have with their manager, and women are finding it difficult to do that. Also, the men who go in and have a meeting with the boss whenever they want are appearing to have more direct access to management. This, in turn, is affecting overall employee morale. 

Many commenters criticized the policy and even invoked the UK’s Equality Act 2010, which prohibits discrimination based on one's gender. One of the comments also said that they had worked on the Equality Act policy, and during that, they noticed that women were facing “materially more burdensome access” to management and leadership compared to their male colleagues. And the situation that this Reddit user describes clearly fits the bill for this comment's point. 

Some commentators, however, were more sensitive to the nuances of this policy and said that the reason this manager has such a rule in place might be due to religious or cultural reasons.  That may have been the case as the poster said that he had not explained the reason behind this decision was other than that he was “uncomfortable being alone with a woman” and that he wanted to keep “professional boundaries” intact. 

HR had, as the poster clarified, concluded that this policy would continue and that there was nothing wrong with it. Many commenters did not like this and brought up the ACAS, or the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. This is an independent public body that helps with workplace dispute resolution in the UK. 

Many also said that such open-door policies should be equally applied to male and female employees, or else should apply equally to all employees. The main reason is that several confidential issues, as mentioned before, like medical concerns, salaries, or any other internal complaint, can be a difficult subject for a colleague to be unbiased towards.

In this case, maybe HR or some other neutral third person can come in instead of people that these women already work with and may not want to share personal problems in front of. 

As of the time of writing, this Reddit post has been locked, and new comments cannot be posted.