As people are spending more and more time in the workplace, this proximity becomes a catalyst for office romances. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 46% of the work force is made up of women and that 1 in 10 Americans work more than 60 hours a week.
Younger employees who are looking for companionship and friendship. Additionally, there are many successful marriages that are the result of these romances. However, there are a few serious problems with office romances.
 Jerry Osteryoung |
While there is no law that prohibits dating or affairs in the workplace, businesses need to have a pretty strong policy about this that is included in the employee manual. Probably this is most egregious is when a boss is dating his or her subordinate and this should be prohibited. While it just so natural that people that work very closely together will become romantically involved; however, there is a multiple of reasons why this should not be allowed or tolerated in any way.
Three cases that demonstrate these points. A boss started to date his assistant (they were both married) and it developed into a full-scale affair. They spent much time together even including much time in his office with the door closed which is something that he, in the past, never did. As anticipated, the affair wound up going bad with a few screaming matches in the office. Finally, the boss had his employee transferred to another job in the firm.
The employee was so upset she sued both the business and the boss for sexual harassment and it was very expensive for the firm to settle this and it could have been avoided if they would have had a policy on this and then enforced the policy.
In another case, a manager was having an affair with her subordinate. She gave her subordinate special privileges including the ability to come in whenever he wanted to and frequent raises. The morale of her department just plummeted with accusations of favoritism running rampant in the department and out of the department. While they did eventually get married, the morale in this manager’s department suffered and top management again had to move this employee out of the supervision of his wife.
One final example is a manager who was having an affair with a subordinate. When approached by other staff members about the inappropriateness of this behavior, he threatened firing any employee who said anything about this. This retaliation brings about other law violations and other lawsuits.
Bottom line affairs of any kind between a supervisor and her/his employee should not be tolerated and consequences need to be felt by both parties. Some firms have gone so far to demand that any employee having an affair in their company to sign a “consensual relationship agreement” to ward off any sexual harassment charges.
One of the best things an employer can do is to have an effective anti-harassment policy, as this seems to ward off sexual harassment charges.
By far the worse thing you can do is not to do anything, as this basically is an acceptance of this behavior, which just cannot be tolerated. Like most things, a problem ignored just grows and grows.
Now go out and make sure that you have both an anti-harassment policy in place as well as your policy about employees dating one another and especially very clear policy about managers and employees dating. Clearly consulting both the HR department and a great HR attorney are so critical in these situations. While this is not pleasant stuff to deal with, it must be done otherwise it is going to cost your business a lot of money.
You can do this!!
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Jerry Osteryoung is a consultant to businesses - he has directly assisted over 3,000 firms. He is the Jim Moran Professor of Entrepreneurship (Emeritus) and Professor of Finance (Emeritus) at Florida State University. He was the founding Executive Director of The Jim Moran Institute and served in that position from 1995 through 2008. His newest book co-authored with Tim O'Brien, "If You Have Employees, You Really Need This Book," is an Amazon.com bestseller. He can be reached by e-mail at jerry.osteryoung@gmail.com.