Recent studies have shown that office romances are exceedingly common. In 2014, Vault.com published the results of their Office Romance Survey, which showed that 56% of respondents indicated that they had been involved in an office romance during their career. This number is unsurprising when you consider that most people spend 8 or more hours each workday surrounded by their colleagues, making work their primary single activity on any given day. But how should your office approach romances among employees in order to protect your practice while not unduly encroaching on the lives of your staff?
One approach is to ban romantic relationships among coworkers. This approach is quite common when it comes to relationships between superiors and those they oversee, but less so among co-workers of equal rank. According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), their 2013 survey showed that 99% of responding employers banned supervisor-subordinate relationships, while only 12% did so between employees in comparable positions to one another. A ban may sound good to you as the business owner, but it may not be effective in actually eradicating the issue. Plus, it can put you in a bad position if you later learn about the relationship and choose not to act against well-performing employees. This is because sporadic application of rules is of little protection and can lead to discrimination and other labor claims by those to whom to the rule is applied.
Another approach is to require disclosure of office romances. Some offices even require their employees to sign “consent” agreements indicating that the relationship is consensual and that it is taking place independently of the parties’ roles as employees. This can help if there is later an issue that leads to one of the parties being terminated. Keeping open communications between your practice and your staff, especially about office romances, can help to prevent disputes and can lead to fewer sexual harassment claims. Being informed of office breakups, for example, can help you to know in advance to be on the lookout for one scorned party harassing the other. However, you choose to handle the situation, always ensure that your rules are clear (preferably in your handbook) and fairly enforced, so that you can avoid being dragged into the battle should a relationship go sour.
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