Bound by Love/Law

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There is an underlying logic why people tend to have romantic inclination towards their colleagues at work place. With a lot of time being spent in the office, there is a very high possibility that people share their interests, hobbies and day-to-day experiences with their co-workers there by fostering an emotional bonding between them. It is also convenient in a way that people get a lot of time to know each other. Working in same projects also offers a close view into the psyche, intellect of a person which often leads to attraction. No rocket science here. Probably the case of Pritam and Jagruti can be seen as one of those many relationships that innocently blossom in the organization.

The case here seems a pre-emptive measure on the part of the employer to avoid any kind of hassle that might arise from workplace relationship as the one between Pritam and Jagruti. One might argue that, the performance issue of individual employee might be the point of contention behind such “love contracts”. But the facts from the case suggest that Pritam is doing pretty well in his professional life and has his name suggested for some senior posts. So, this assumption does not hold true. Another common issue that might arise from relationships in organizational set up is the reporting hierarchy. Even that is not a cause of concern here as reporting relationship is not affected.

There have been quite some instances in organizations where workplace romance has increased the performance level of an employee and has contributed to higher job satisfaction. This gets converted into great morale among fellow employees and thus greater involvement. It might look all hunky dory from the organizational point of view. But things in reality are not as rosy as is perceived in the first impression. And this is where the concern of Intermediaries Technologies seems justified.

There have been occasionswhere office romances which have gone awry have had far reaching repercussions on the organization. Organizations have unwillingly been embroiled with legal hassles on charges of sexual harassment charges on some employees. It does not take a lot of time for "love is in the air" feeling to change to "lawsuit in the air" feeling. This in its wake brings in bad publicity. The company’s image as well as its stock market status has tumbled like a house of cards. Dealing with this kind of dicey situation requires a lot of common sense and objective approach to the problem. But often these two are the first things that bite the dust in case of a fall out.
Apart from that there are other issues like;
• Distraction from mundane issues of office life
• Irregularity in the office routine of an employee
• Sharing of office time means increased workload on a co-worker(assuming him/her to be single)
• Loss of respect for employees towards the organization for allowing such indiscretion.
• The most popular: Favouritism, discrimination, Sexual harassment, blackmail, retaliation (discussed by a lot of us in the forum)
• Compromising with confidentiality of information

So handling or managing these kinds of inevitable relationships rather than explicitly discouraging it is the big challenge. Some of the participants have suggested discouraging these relationships from forming in the organization. But it would be a impractical to actually practice this kind of policy. Even if you impose a ban on workplace romance, as a normal human tendency, people will find ways to bypass these policies no matter how stringent they are.

The key issue here is, the moment the employer transgresses the personal space of employees, it often becomes a very uncomfortable situation for them. So these critical issues should be handled in subtle manner. As such, enforcing a contract upon employees in relationship is not a great idea. Something as personal as this should be left to the couples. There are certain things though, which can come in handy on part of the organization to bypass a potential lawsuit and also get their message across to the employees about the conduct. The best way is to issue a written romance guideline which can make the employees aware of the dos and donts. This promotes a healthy work environment and sends out a message that company prefers a productive environment. In quite a lot of occasions, when the companies have been dragged to court, these written guidelines issued by them have come in handy for the companies to come out of the lawsuits unscathed. Apart from that quite a lot of organizations have started training supervisors and managers on workplace romance concerns and handling sexual harassment issues. So, contractually binding to lovebirds should be done away with, keeping in view that there are lot many better ways to handle such issues.