Love Contract “A Superfluous Contract”

Can it get any weird that this, “A Contract for Love”. Although I have two years of work experience but this is the first time I have heard of a term like Love Contract. Any contract has implications for both the employer & employee, hence we could look into any contract from the perspective of both sides.

Employers’ Perspective:

Why would an employer force someone to sign a Love Contract? There could be many reasons for it:

• An employer may think that the performance of the employee is going down due to a romantic relationship between two employees, so the employer can force an employee to sign a Love Contract as it happened with Pritam. But does this actually help the employer & how would the employer know the reason for performance degradation of an employee. There could be many reasons for performance degradation of an employee like family problems, lack of motivation, etc. An employer can always add a clause related to performance in the Employment Contract, so why to waste resources & time in making a Love Contract.
• An employer may feel that an employee is giving some undue advantages to another employee like promotions, awards, etc due to a romantic relationship between them. A general clause for any such unfair practises could be added in the Employment Contract & I believe that there is no need for a separate Love Contract for this. Any such unfair practises should be strictly dealt with according to the rules of the organization
• Some organizations appreciate romantic relationships as they believe that such relationships inculcate loyalty amongst the employees. I worked in Infosys & a few years back it had a policy to gift a car to the employees if they get married.

Employees’ Perspective

With ever increasing hours the employees are spending in their workplace, engagement of employees in romantic relationships is pretty natural. But employees have a responsibility towards the organization & they should sort out their professional & personal relationships. An employee could develop a feeling of resentment towards an employer if he/she is made to sign a Love Contract & that could lead to dissatisfaction amongst the employees which could have serious implications for the organization.