Love Is In The Air Conditioning

Their eyes met across the photocopier. Before long they were spotted sharing their lunch hours together in the staff room. A few months later it became official – our two office lovebirds were engaged. 

An office romance is a happy event, of course. Across the south west many of us spend more than half our waking hours with our work colleagues. Even without the help of Valentine’s Day the chances are that any business will have its fair share of “workplace relationships”.

Why could this be an issue and how should businesses react?

A personal relationship between two members of staff could cause a number of problems. 

Firstly, if one of the employees reports to the other, are you comfortable for the arrangement to continue? Is it fair that someone’s pay rise is determined by someone they are in a relationship with? How realistic is it to expect a manager to act consistently and fairly towards their partner when managing their performance at work? 

Secondly, if the relationship fizzles out will there be any friction at work between them? You may have to move them to different departments or to other areas of your workspace to minimise their contact during the day.

Finally what if one half of the couple leaves and goes to work for a competitor? Will you be sure that no confidential information gets passed to a rival business? Can you stop pillow talk?

It may seem unromantic at this time of year to think about these issues but the solution is to draw up a workplace relationship policy. It doesn’t have to be stuffy, but it is a good idea to let your staff know how a work relationship could affect their job. For example, management lines could be altered if a relationship exists which compromise either party.

It is also fair and lawful to put in place certain protections for staff having a relationship with another individual working for a direct competitor, including moving them to a less sensitive part of the organisation.

It’s important to take the legal implications into account as there are some quirks of discrimination law which might arise. Under the Sex Discrimination Act a business is not permitted to treat an employee less favourably just because they are married or in a civil partnership. Any workplace relationship policy might therefore want to include any close relationship between workers (such as family, in-laws, and those who are living together).

Finally it’s also important that any workplace relationship policy is applied consistently across the organisation to convince everyone that it is fair.

The alternative solution, of course, is to have one short rule – only one employee to be at the photocopier at any one time!

For more information or advice, contact Patrick Howarth

Published 14/02/2008. The author of this article is Patrick Howarth