As Christmas approaches and we enter the season of goodwill – and the office party - you may find
yourself surprised at just how some workplace relationships are blossoming.
Love may be a many-splendoured thing but it needs careful managing in the workplace to keep the team on task and the organisation out of court. Read our top tips here:
The facts of love
What you need to know about workplace romance is that it is:
- Commonplace: thanks to long hours culture and better gender balance in the workforce, almost eight in every 10 UK workers admit a workplace romance and six out of 10 have met their life partner at work.
- Fired by different motives: including the desire to seek a) love, long-term partner b) adventure, excitement, ego satisfaction c) advancement, power, pay rise, lighter workloads.
- Likely to raise or lower performance: dependent on the motives of participants. Love motive associated with e.g. greater job involvement, work motivation; other motives associated with damaging workplace effects
When love turns to hate
As love runs its true course, expect a bumpy road:
- Broken confidences: as lovebirds share colleagues’ secrets and personal information
- Favouritism: e.g. top boss who made excuses to manager whose secretary shirked work load; manager then found out pair were having an affair.
- Tension in office atmosphere: as couples openly canoodle, share endearments or act out the hostility of a lover’s tiff in public view.
- A lawsuit for sexual harassment: as love dies and a jilted partner (for example) pesters ex-love to point of obsession and seeks revenge by ensuring full story aired in court
Tough love
Banning love doesn’t work. It only drives it underground and may infringe employee rights to expression of opinions and belief belief, so:
- Develop a ‘dating’ policy: specifying a code of conduct, e.g. employees expected to behave professionally at work, keep relationship private, away from colleagues, and keep matters civil if relationship fails.
- Have a formal, written, posted sexual harassment policy: and train employees on what behaviours constitute harassment, e.g. it’s OK to ask someone out but not to persist with unwanted attention.
- Look for vulnerability: e.g. accountant is dating person from whom she receives expense claims - set up checks, balances to protect against dishonesty.
- Strongly discourage romance between supervisors, subordinates: where the power balance is unequal and open to charges of favouritism. If you’re already too late, think about changing reporting lines, or moving one party to another department.
- Keep the focus on performance: and don’t start making moral judgments on other people’s behaviour
And if you’re the lovelorn one, remember discretion is the better part of valour!
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