Implications of mutual contract

The concept of ‘Office Spouse’ has evolved over the years and such a kind of relationship is quite natural ,stressed by the fact that companies have inculcated the culture of co-work, being creative together and functioning in a unit. Such phenomena can be attributed to social psychology termed propinquity which basically leads to interpersonal relationship. This may cause the employer with operational difficulties particularly in situations where employees involved are in superior/subordinate work relationship. In this regards the employer has every right to vest the responsibility of such relationships with the employee’s involved. Every company has a strict clause regarding harassment in any form and any lawsuit does not augur well for an organization’s brand image. In the story though there is no direct reporting structure between Pritam Singh and Jagruti Patel but as has always been mine experience, HR does have quite an influential role in propelling one through varied situations and this is where favouritism and leniency creeps in. In an interesting internet article I found out that in a survey conducted – ‘59 percent said they had had a workplace romance at some point in their careers. Another 17 percent said they had never dated a co-worker, but would. Twenty-four percent said they never had an office fling and had no interest in doing so.’ This just goes on to show that employees’ emotions cannot be inhibited and neither can there be any consensual relationship agreement to commit to non-indulgence of any sort. As has been mentioned by many in their posts that companies do provide hefty incentives for marriage between employees within the same organization, but to me it seems it has much to do with increasing the commitment towards work, to build on a sense of mutual responsibility and be competitive. To add further nowadays technology firms of the likes Google, Yahoo etc support the concept of work from home. A married couple in office is like promoting a homely work environment. So the concept of love contract seems irrelevant here when it is accepted that they are a couple and fully aware of the implications arising out of working together for the same concern. The sole purpose of a legal love contract is seemingly to avoid the future hassles from the employer’s perspective. They are meant to typically specify that the relationship is mutually agreeable and consensual and is totally unrelated to the company. It is more to specify that couples are totally aware of the harassment policy and in case of any relationship dispute it would not be legally binding on the company through any kind of lawsuit. However on the flip side the relationship status defined by the employer also may not be binding every time. Suppose the person involved in the relationship is harassed by some other person, in this case the employee has every right to file the legal suit and drag the employer into legal disputes. So love contracts are generally a perceived threat which can be used to influence the employees to adhere to a stricter moral behaviour and consistently deliver as per the performance standards required by the organisation. Some questions can also be raised regarding the validity of such contract –What happens if one of the parties involved in the love contract is transferred to a different destination some time after signing the love contract, what will be the implications? Can we still hold the love contract valid? In this case the love contract may be valid only on paper, but the bindings on the relationship are not there, as there is no scope for interaction between the employees and hence the effects are nullified.