Subject: Office romance - the risks, is it worth it?
The issue
In some places, office romance is not encouraged as it is considered to be a threat to the total well-being of the organisation.
Such organisations see office romance as containing the potential for abuse, dysfunctional conflict, unholy alliances and a damaging distraction. In some situations what usually happens is that one of the lovers ends up leaving the organisation to make life easier for their partner. This may be as a result of unsavoury rumours, hurtful gossip or pressure from management.
Office romance may also undermine the abilities of the individuals involved to perform their professional duties. You may have seen an example of this in the BBC show the apprentice where one of the candidates Philip Taylor got fired because he got distracted by his relationship with Kate Walsh another candidate during a task. Things like reward and punishment as well as the use of power and politics within the office setting may be affected by a love affair.
The risks
In addition, males and females in supervisory positions who have office affairs with female or male subordinate run the risk of becoming the subject of a sexual-harassment suit if the man or woman later claims to have been coerced or pressured into the relationship for fear of her job.
For that reason many companies now forbid romance between bosses and subordinates. Other companies require persons involved to sign consensual relationship agreements – also known as “love contracts”, which state that the relationship is voluntary.
The legal position
Employers cannot stop romantic relations between employees; however they can develop guidelines for their organisation to manage such situations to minimize potential claims of harassment or bullying.
I am interested in your views and points.
- what do you think about office romance?
- what do you think about the notion of love contracts?
- do you think a love contract is necessary or is it HR gone mad?
- what methods does your organisation currently use to manage office romance?
- what methods would you suggest that HR uses to manage this issue?
- are you in an office romance? How would you feel about being asked to sign a love contract?
This comment was last edited on Feb 12, 2010
Did you read the article in last Sunday's Times:
Office romance: Your desk or mineTalks about the increase in HR policies dealing with office based relationships in the US, plus some research from Sheffield Business School.
In my experience 'encouraging' or 'not encouraging' office romances is futile: they will or won't happen regardless of office policies or management intervention. If they are between boss and subordinate and you can't remove a line-management relationship because of specialisms or the size of your organisation, one of the parties has to leave. This is where a formal policy can help.
Otherwise, all you can do is hope and offer advice to both parties: most people have the sense to manage their relationship in the office. I've seen two major relatiosnhips in my office over the past few years: in the first case a very passionate affair ended badly and one of the parties left; in the second a little awkwardness turned into a better professional as well as personal relationship and the couple now have two children while still working together.
Really, HR should keep itself out of this kind of thing as much as possible.
Mark I agree with some of what you say, ideally it would be good to keep managers and Hr out of such sitiuations.
However, I do believe it is imporatnt to implement policies about workplace romances, even a general policy is good. It shows that office romance is a fact of organisational life and sends the message that we shouldn't let romantic relationships affect the workplace. I do agree that it shouldn't be over the top.
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