Howard's way

Welcome to the Twilight Zone that is City law firm Howard Kennedy.

Last week, it issued a press release with the results of a survey on office relationships it had conducted among 27 human resources managers from an assortment of businesses.

This revealed that only 15% had formal policies on workplace relationships in place, and led head of employment Andrea Nicholls to warn sagely that businesses should have a clear policy in place to tackle what can be tricky issues.

So, we wondered, does Howard Kennedy have such a policy itself? The response from the press office was that it could not tell us on the grounds that the survey had been conducted on a confidential basis, and Howard Kennedy's own head of HR had been among the respondents.

This reply struck us as a little bizarre.

Surely, we asked, given that it is your own survey, you won't complain to yourself if you breach your own confidentiality? In fact, as the marketing director tells us, it turns out that the firm never comments publicly on personnel issues, survey or no survey.

But at least we know that when Howard Kennedy says it keeps things private, the firm really means it.