Managing the office romance

When chemistry strikes, romance at work can become unavoidable, regardless of the potentially career-ending pitfalls.

Concerns about reputational damage or future harassment claims failed to stop Michelle and Barack Obama, who met while working at a Chicago law firm, or Bill and Melinda Gates, who fell for each other’s charms after chatting at work (in a Microsoft carpark).

With the amount of time people spend at work together it is no surprise that attraction happens. It’s a primal urge that can override rational thought. According to a survey of employees by employment website CareerBuilder, more than a third—36 percent—of workers had dated a co-worker, while 31 percent met their future spouse at the office.

A workplace tryst is not always sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, however.

The survey revealed that more than a quarter of men, 27 percent, reported having an affair with a colleague where one person was married, as did 21 percent of women. Six percent said they’d left a job because a workplace liaison had soured.

How involved should employers be in the love lives of their workforce?

“Legally speaking there’s not a lot of regulation or rules when a relationship is consensual,” says David Woolf, a US-based partner at global law firm Drinker Biddle and Reath.

“There are certainly best practices that have evolved; they are mostly employer-dependent,” Woolf says.

Historically, he explains, employers have not been interested in regulating this type of conduct, other than to protect their businesses and their work.

Certain rules or company policies, such as ‘love contracts’—seen mainly in the US—can help prevent future problems.

Declare your love

Telling your employer that you are in a relationship with a colleague can prevent a lot of headaches for everyone.

The instigators of two multimillion-dollar legal claims for “wrongful termination” filed against Markel might attest to that. The two CEOs involved left the company after an internal investigation discovered an “undisclosed relationship”.

Helen Farr, partner at Fox Williams solicitors, says some employers like to have relationships between co-workers declared, so that no-one then needs to move jobs or leave.

“It’s quite common among banking clients to have that approach; if you have a serious boyfriend/girlfriend type relationship you are supposed to declare it.”

The question of when a romance becomes a relationship that should be declared is a tricky one. Is it on a first date? When things become intimate? When you’ve met each other’s parents or children? Farr says it is a grey area.

Staff who agree they’re doing more than harmless flirting and decide to fess up may be surprised to hear that some employers have a policy requiring people to leave.

“I’m aware of one organisation in the UK that has taken this approach, quite recently. They want one or other of you to leave. But that’s untested as of yet,” she says.

Conflicts of interest

Power imbalances create a different issue, says Woolf, explaining that it is common to have a rule that two employees can’t be involved if one is subordinate to the other or if one has direct managerial or budgetary authority over the other.

“It’s a conflict of interest issue,” he says. “For example, is a supervisor charged with reviewing a subordinate going to be fair?

“If there is some kind of promotion or an advancement, the company may still go to the supervisor and ask his or her opinion but they may treat it differently if they’re in a relationship.”

In those instances, relationships should be declared to protect against claims of favouritism or discrimination from other colleagues. Declaration can also ensure that potential harassment issues can be dealt with as early as possible.

In the era of #MeToo, transparency and honesty make a lot of sense for people who might become vulnerable after a relationship has gone south.

One way to formalise this further is with a ‘love contract’, something favoured by particularly litigious-savvy employers in the US.

If the relationship breaks down, the contract is supposed to limit the legal liability of the employer, says Farr.

However, Woolf says, while this could be a nice first step for the employer, it is not the be all and end all.

“You need to write the contract the correct way, including to say that if it changes or there are any issues please contact us. Then the employer needs to stay vigilant,” he says.

However, don’t expect problems to disappear because people have signed on the dotted line.

“The situation may arise where one person is keener than the other,” says Farr, “so the whole situation can be a nightmare to manage.”

Secrets and lies

Being open and honest might sound reasonable on paper but if you’re not sure how the relationship will pan out, or one or both of you already have a partner, the idea loses its appeal. Honesty is also less attractive when a lucrative wage may be threatened by an admission.

As an example of how a relationship at work can be costly, John Neal, now the CEO of Lloyd’s, was docked A$550,000 (£340,000) of his bonus in his previous job running QBE after he failed to tell his employer he was in a relationship with his personal assistant.

One way that employers attempt to sidestep the need for a declaration is to ban intimacy between colleagues altogether.

Farr knows of a UK company, with a US parent, that has decided to try to prohibit relationships in the workplace or ask people to move on.

“In the US there’s more of a feeling that it is improper for two people who are working together to have a relationship and an inappropriate way for people to behave.

“There is more pressure to either curtail the relationship or move people on from the company, to try to limit the employer’s exposure if it goes wrong,” she says.

As Woolf points out, a ban makes it more likely that people are not going to disclose. “Then the employee is in violation of the policy and you put the employer in the position where they almost have to act,” he says.

Extramarital affairs are the relationships most likely to remain under wraps. This can become an issue for a business if it involves someone who represents the company, for example the CEO.

Farr says an affair at work can be perceived as a slur on the integrity of the parties involved in that relationship.

“If someone is very senior that could cause blackmail or problems in the business, although I’ve not actually come across that in practice,” she says.

“I can imagine that for someone like Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, or Stuart Rose when he was CEO and chairman of M&S, who have particularly senior roles in which people expect them to have very high standards and lots of integrity, it might be perceived as damaging to the organisation or brand if they were found to be having an affair.

“I’ve definitely known of people who have had affairs and as a result have been politely asked to leave because of the sense that it tends to go to someone’s integrity and the sense of their ability to do the job.”

But, she says, it would be difficult to sack someone because they were having an affair.

“The problem with it is that you are imposing your moral code on someone else,” she explains, although there is a scenario where things aren’t going well generally, then it turns out the person is having an affair, so that might be one of a number of reasons that’s used to terminate their employment.

Gender discrimination is another issue that can rear its ugly head, Woolf says. It can arise if people are in a subordinate/supervisor relationship and haven’t disclosed or it’s prohibited. In such cases the employer may need to mete out discipline.

“As the employer you may want to look at the situation differently. The senior person may be of more value and may be harder to terminate than a less senior person,” he says. “So the employer makes the decision to terminate the junior party for legitimate business reasons.”

If the senior person is a man and the junior person is a woman, the woman could say she was treated differently because of gender.

“That is the risk in the litigation you see coming out of this when there’s a termination or disciplinary procedure,” he says.

Ideal scenario

Relationships between colleagues will happen despite the wishes of employers and Farr has an interesting suggestion for businesses contemplating a policy review.

It would great if people were comfortable enough, and the work environment was open enough, for people to feel happy about declaring their love interests, she says.

The ideal is for employees to be able to disclose and employers to put in place steps to manage that. That might mean moving someone or changing reporting lines slightly, to make sure there are no unintended consequences. But when that trust is lacking, people may feel the need for subterfuge.

“Obviously being in a relationship is a massive part of your life, so if you feel you have to hide it that’s quite a lot of extra pressure and can be quite stressful.

“But, and there’s a lot of research on this, the best performing employees are those who bring their ‘whole selves’ to work,” she concludes.