Hi Sari,
Please understand things clearly to handle this situation.
* HR will not intervene in her personal matter
There are many reaons for that, like:
- It is her personal life and her own decision.
-This may not be true (I mean has she herself declared that she has an extra marital affair???? Or even if, it is none of HR's business. Just because she is is seen taking breaks with another man does not mean she has an affair, I am sure most of the people who talk such things dont have a base to their comments)
* Because your staff is conservative and if they observe a behaviour from an employee that they are not able to take in the right perspective, its their problem, still as this will can take the focus of the team in another direction, that is, the team will devote more time discussing her than doing the work given to them, what you can do is to talk to the concerned employee, The conversation with that employee will not have anything to do with her decision of getting into a relationship, but how people around are and the importance of the quote "when in Rome do as the Romans do", while she may say that she does not care about such people, Her caring is not required to put these guys straight or to teach them a lesson but to ensure the focus does not drift anywhere but work.
* You can only ask her understanding of the matter, if she is a good performer and is a team player, she can keep doing what makes her happy, but keep it to herself and ensure no one gets to see/talk about anything.
* It is against the dignity of a woman to be asked about an extra marital even if she has any and no one in the company has the right to question an emplyee on decisions in their personal lives.
* I rubbish the idea of sending letters to her husband or children. This as rightly said by a friend about can potentially spoil her life forever.
* None of us can understand the real thing, it may be right may be not, if its not right, we should forget, if it is right, circumstances she is going through must have cause it to happen, and only she knows her circumstances.
Sari, I would urge you to take a well thought out step in this case, as this involves sentiments/dignity/threat to leves of the employee, husband, children and the family.
Being an HR person who is employed by the company, you only work for the company and what is the things that stop employee performance, if her perfomance is not good, you can question her on performance and try to improve it by finding with factors affecting the performance and even if it is her personal life, all you can advise is to keep a balance between work and personal life.
But if other are not able to work because they see someone's extra marital, I guess there is some serious issue with them, they should rather be councelled as they are lost focus/directionless/loose-tongue/insensitive people who need to get a life and, the reason I say that is that in this case we have a male employee of the same organization who is also involved and they make no fuss about him... Why talk only about a woman... ???????
Please stop morale policing......
People raising the questions here are the real cause of the problem... They should be more active in their work and should not be concerned about peoples lives...
Regards,
Gagan