Should you get involved in your partner’s job?

A while back I posted about helicopter parents and their impact on the world of work. Over the past few days I have been part of a thread about partners of employees who involve themselves in their loved one’s workplace issues which culminated in a couple of great posts by Venting HR Guy.

I have no direct experience of either helicopter parents or for that matter interfering/protective significant others though in the past I did get calls from mums/husbands/ friends to  tell me that a member of my team would be off sick that day. I usually start from the point of giving people the benefit of the doubt in life  but somehow this would always made me suspicious.  Anywhere I worked had sickness absence policies which said that the person themselves had to make the call – unless extreme circumstances prevented it of course. I guess that was meant as a way to detect if someone was taking liberties. 

There is of course the matter of perspective in any situation. I  recall a conversation I had with a lady whose husband had been promoted at work. Initially she had been very excited about this and had shared how much she was looking forward to going to company events and that she had already earmarked his salary rise for a holiday and some serious spending on their house. As is so often the case the promotion also meant a significant increase in his workload and he had to work longer hours and weekends. She was less than happy about this and said “they should have made that clear. It would affected his decision to take the job”.  I wondered out loud who “they” were. I was sure that her husband had understood totally what he was taking on. I could only deduce that he had played it down and that the extra money did not make up for his absence.

Having spoken to a couple of HR manager friends I learned that  they  have experience of members of the family contacting them about work issues for their employees. Most times it is when the partner/spouse has been told one version of the story – which is at odds with the organisation’s version.

So it is more common than I realised. Have you ever been tempted to get involved in your partner’s work issues? If so – what happened? And if have been on the receiving end – please share.