Relevance of Love Contract

As we have learned that the interaction at work between employer & employee is largely aimed at regulating relationship. The referred interaction among GM HR, HR Manager & Senior software engineer regarding Dating and Relationship Agreement intend to regulate the behaviour of HR Manger & Senior software engineer. Let us analyse the case from different angles.

From organisational perspective:

The objective of Dating and Relationship Agreement as mentioned in the contract is to regulate the employment relationship, to be more specific regulate the behaviour of employees involved in voluntary relationship of mutual consensus. Perhaps the assumption is that this will ensure that employee’s performance, effectiveness & efficiency, conduct & organisational relationship will not be affected.

Also Dating and Relationship Agreement will limit the liability of an organization in case the relationship ends on a bitter note and litigation or mutual conflict of the involved individuals. Also love contracts relieve the company of any liability during the time period of the office romance prior to the signing of the contract.

Organisation can also argue that if two persons are really interested in the above mentioned relation then their must not be any issue in signing the agreement(here making an exception to same gender cases) & if they are just passing time then also they must sign the contract in order to safeguard the organisations interest.

From the employee’s point of view:

From the employees point of view it is a power exercise by the organisation. It is a bargain situation, where one employee has the option to get the promotion by signing the contract or one of them (HR Manager & Senior software engineer) has to resign immediately. Further the GM HR is forcing to sign the contract without even letting them read.

But the question is If, the Dating and Relationship Agreement panacea for this kind of problems? Love contract may be able to regulate behaviour of the employee at work place but I doubt about the regulation of performance, effectiveness & efficiency.

I think organisations can’t regulate the emotions rather they can influence positively or negatively. By forcing the employees to sign the love contract will invoke the negative reaction. Emotions are very complex to define especially in reference to the situations mentioned in the case. So, Emotions shouldn't be defined in contract terms, and they can't be reduced to a legal document with any significance.

Further organisation should have consulted (taken them in confidence) before enforcing them to sign the contract. Sometimes problems are not as complex as it seems to be, as suggest by Swavab Sourav personal counselling might have been resulted more sophisticated solution. Organisation still had chance to made them sign the Love contract after counselling them.

As mentioned in earlier posting by aushutosh the dating & romance is neither new to organisations and 4 out of 10 employees have at some point or the other been involved in office link-ups. 1 out of 5 end up in a matrimonial association. So, organisations have every right to exercise the option of love contract but they must not enforce without consulting the involved persons.

I think more than love contract organisation culture has a role to play; a open culture which may help employees to convert the relationship in to marriage may result in comparatively superior result. Another point worth noticing (as mentioned by other peers) is that if the employees involved in relationship should not have the superior subordinate relationship (typically departmental) in order to maintain the organisations interest.