Love Contract: Policies can fail to cover everything..

Some of the larger companies in Indian context like Infosys Technologies ltd have strict Anti-sexual harassment policies laid out clearly in their policy manuals. New employees joining the organization are communicated in their orientation training on what is termed and can be considered as a case of sexual harassment irrespective of gender. Harassment cases are heard by a separate committee formed of senior executives. Employee has all the right to move to next level of authority if they are not satisfied with the verdict and also file a legal case in case they feel they aren’t being heard properly.

However, what the policy misses out is on the consensual relationship between employees at work place. In scenarios where people are working in small teams for long hours requiring lots of coordination, mutual attraction turning into romantic liaisons between employees of opposite sex are quite common at workplace. Particularly a scenario involving boss and a sub-ordinate, “love contract” in a suitable form might be a potent tool for the organization to check favoritism at work place.

However, this should be a step in the positive direction in the sense to check favoritism and exploitation at work place. The organization shouldn’t look at limiting its liability in case of sexual harassment as signing the contract also means that employees are foregoing some of their rights to file sexual harassment cases in relations they are voluntarily involved. This is particularly true for smaller companies where proper HR practices are not in place and employees can be exploited in the name of “Love Contract” and grievance hearing is also not provided. Hence, “Love contracts” should be implemented in very specific cases.

But I guess “Love Contract” would be difficult to implement in the Indian context within all cultural, social and societal limitations. It would lead to allegations of privacy invasions. As, being discussed earlier by sir, coercion might be the only way to implement such contracts. Also, people would not like to accept allegations of link-up and the company officials themselves need to be very sure lest they face defamation charges.

Although funny it may sound, many organizations are in fact encouraging the “dating” employees to marry with lots of incentives like same workplace, same team and getting on site opportunities together thrown in. This would legalize the relation and organization may be able to benefit from synergies of such marriages rather than being adversely affected in the first place.

Ashish Sehgal