Wednesday, March 3, 2010

How effective are Love Contracts?

Now a day, an individual spends a lot of time in office, way beyond the working hours. Thus workplace not only becomes professional place but also a place for social mingling. One gets to spend a lot of time with his colleague, senior and subordinate. This it is highly likely that the romantic relations develop between the two. But employer sees these developments as barriers to the company growth due to the various reasons as already stated my by colleagues.

Though Love Contracts seems to be an effective solution to handle the love affairs, but I seriously doubt over the effectiveness of these. What is the guarantee that even after the love contract, those involved in the romantic relationships will not do unfair favoritism in terms of salary hike and promotion to their subordinates as there is no way to prove it because of high amount of subjectivity involved in the matter of promotions.

Also indicated by Anuj that the organizations generally promote intra company marriages, but this also brings the problems of undesirable favoritism as happened in my company where as entry level employee married her supervisor which leads to favoritism.

The only case where this contract seems to be effective is when there are chances regarding charges of sexual harassment.

Thus I cast a serious doubt over the effectiveness of love contract. Thus if there is any relation that comes to the notice of HR, then the HR manager should transfer one of the employee to another assignment or department. Also, HR can discreetly ask them to sign the Love Contract so as to avoid the situation of sexual harassment charges in the future. But all this should happen discreetly without bringing the matter to the notice of other employee.

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