How an Employer Should Handle Dating at Work?

There are few workplaces where there’s no story of romance developing among employees. It is the duty of the HR personnel and managers to deal with such situations and handle the consequences of workplace romance.

As mentioned above office romance is not at all uncommon. A recently conducted survey on this subject has revealed that close to 40% people taking part in the survey have dated a coworker and around 18% have had at least two interoffice relationships.

How does an employer feel when they come to know about dating at their office? All incidents of employee romance do not leave the managers furious. Things become difficult for the employees particularly when at-office relationships sour. The pointers below will tell you about the most common issues created by office romance.

• When a subordinate and a manager enter a relationship making other members of the team feel bad about it
• Public display of affection is not a welcome thing in office environment; this is because often other employees feel uncomfortable
• There are several instances of bitter workers at office romance performing badly at work and spoiling the environment of the workplace by filing false claims for sexual harassment
• Managers who have the habit of dating all attractive persons working under them create perception of bias for people they date

What can an employer do with employees who have begun dating at office? The discussion below will answer this question of your perfectly.

• Employers often prevent occurrence of romantic relationships between their employees using the non-fraternization policy. This policy stops people from taking part in office-romance. This policy although extremely effective comes with some challenges. Often it becomes difficult for the employer to monitor whether all employees working at his/her office is compliant to the policy. Many are against this policy saying that the policy is unconstitutional as it impairs an individual’s right to enjoy privacy.

• Employs also prevent occurrence workplace Relationshipblogs.info using conflict of interest policy. This policy ensures that there cannot be any close relationship between the subordinates and the mangers; here the term “close relationship” might refer to close family relationships as well as office romance.

• The next policy used by employers for managing at-office romance is the informed consent policy. This policy requires both individuals involved in workplace romance to know and abide by the company’s sexual harassment policy. Employers using this policy might ask people involved in at-work romance to sign a contract (commonly referred to as love contract) where they acknowledge that they know all the clauses of the company’s sexual harassment policy.

As an employer you have some duties to complete before implementing the office romance policies discussed above. You will need to find out the process your company will adopt for informing and training the management and staff about all these new guidelines. If required, you can also appoint a relationship expert to educate people working for you about the rules and regulations set by the new policies.