A couple of sentences in two employers’ employee handbooks seemed innocent enough. The first one involved confidentiality: “We honor confidentiality. We recognize and protect the confidentiality of any information concerning the company, its business plans, its partners [i.e., employees], new business efforts, customers, accounting and financial matters.” The second policy involved employee relationships and prohibited employees from “fraternizing on duty or off duty, dating or becoming overly friendly with the client’s employees or with co-employees.” What could be wrong you ask? According to two court decisions the policies violate the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) as employees could interpret them as prohibiting discussion of the terms and conditions of their employment. [ Guardsmark, LLC v. NLRB, D.C. Cir., & Cintas Corp. v. NLRB , D.C. Cir.]

The moral of the story? Most human resource people don’t think about the National Labor Relations Act when drafting or updating their policy manuals or employee handbooks. If you’ve been one of the many it’s probably time to start thinking about it now. And, if you think that because yours is a nonunion environment that you’re free and clear of this set of worries, not so fast. The NLRA touches many areas of nonunion workplaces as well.