Coldplay kiss-cam cuddlers shine a light on workers' rights and wrongs

THE kiss cam video of US tech firm Astronomer's married chief executive, Andy Byron, cuddling the company’s head of HR, Kristin Cabot, at a Coldplay concert went viral a few weeks ago. I've been asked this question a few times since.

- BETHAN DARWIN

If the Coldplay cuddlers had been employees in England and Wales rather than in America, would it have been unfair dismissal if they had been sacked for what they did?

In America, employment is at will, meaning employees can be dismissed for no reason and without formal process, provided there is no discrimination and provided their contractual rights to notice are met.

American employees do not have the statutory right of unfair dismissal that employees in England and Wales with more than two years' service have.

For a dismissal to be fair in England and Wales, there has to be a fair reason for that dismissal and a fair process must be followed.

Most senior UK employment contracts include provisions that stipulate the duties of executives during their employment and these include catchall provisions that the executive will:

use their best endeavours to promote, protect, develop and extend the business;

report their own wrongdoing and any wrongdoing or proposed wrongdoing of any other employee or director immediately on becoming aware of it; and

comply with company policies in place from time to time.

In addition, handbooks often have value statements of the principles of the employer and these generally include integrity, respect, honesty and accountability.

Value statements typically include a statement that employees are expected to hold themselves to the employer's values.

Although I don’t regularly see personal relationship policies in handbooks, some companies do have them.

In broad terms, in the UK at least, personal relationship policies do not ban personal relationships altogether and are rather more practical.