This story tells us why companies do not encourage romance at work place. Here Intermediaries Technologies Ltd wants to reduce its liability and wants to stay away in case of a strife between Pritam and Jagruti. An organization is not wrong when they take such a stance since most experts, employment lawyers in particular believe that romantic liaisons at workplace ends up in a lose-lose situation if the people involved are not careful.
At work it is expected that employees should keep a professional relationship and should not display affection in public. The time that is spent on flirting, sending sms and emails back and forth affects work. Here Pritam is an aspiring Senior HR Manager with 8 years of experience and Jagruti is a senior software engineer with 2 years of experience. It is possible that when Jagruti started dating Pritam then many other employees would have the perception that the relationship is fueling her career. This especially would be true if Jagruti is given promotions or onsite assignments that might appear to be the result of favoritism even when she is a competent worker.
If in the future the relationship between them turns sour then Jagruti may be jeopardizing her career as Pritam can find endless ways to make her life miserable at work. Organizations have also witnessed office affairs turning to sexual harassment lawsuits in the past.
So to avoid any future unfavourable incident the GM (HR) wants both of them to sign a love contract.
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From all the tons of anecdotes, films, popular culture and other sources during our course to adulthood, we get to know that love is blind, deaf and limp too. It can happen at any time, at any place and at any condition. With this background in our minds, we can fairly argue that whatever relationship Pritam and Jagruti exhibited was absolutely normal and there was no foul intention involved. They met at a recruitment interview and got attracted towards each other developing their relationship in the mean time. There was no valid reason for any long term souring of the relationship (If companies are so good at predicting, then they can do wonders with this ability of premonition!!).
If we look at today’s corporate world scenario, many companies accept romantic relationships among co-workers and go to the extent of providing monetary benefits to those couples who get married working in the same organization. In India, companies like TCS, Wipro, Infosys etc. practise this policy on a regular basis. The basic reason behind such policy is to encourage loyalty among the employees as couples are less likely to leave the organization leaving one partner behind. Another rationale behind it is that, in today’s fast paced life, people are more likely to find their partners at work place where they spend most of their time rather than at other places.
Therefore, this straight away negates the value of a Love Contract where the organization tries to bring the personal relationship of its employees into the limelight and forces the couple to sign an agreement.
Why love contract?
Employee may enter into a relationship with her superior and when the relationship falls sour later, might claim that she was forced into the relationship. Also the peers might claim that an employee was given preferential treatment owing to the relationship,as pointed out by satyajyoti. And if the relationship falls later the boss could underrate the employee deliberately and ignore the performance of the employee. It is an attempt to separate the “personal and professional life” of the employees.
Let us look at what the love contract attempts to achieve-
If they sign to the terms of the contract, Pritam and Jagruti agree that the relationship is a mutually consenting one and this wouldn’t in any way undermine their job performance. If it does, then they have to quit their jobs. The terms of the contract per se are not particularly intimidating. However, what is worrisome is the fact that GMHR is forcing Pritam to sign the agreement even before he has read it. In case Pritam reads the contract before signing it, the GMHR says “One of you have to resign from Intermediaries Technologies. I prefer Jagruti puts down her paper before Six O’ Clock.”
This makes me think ‘Is there an ulterior motive and why is the GMHR not allowing Pritam to sign the contract’? Pritam has every right to read the terms of the contract before signing it. And by saying that Jagruti put her papers down just because Pritam read the terms of the contract, GMHR is not doing himself any favour. His action is questionable.
Employer could try to enforce love contract in the following cases-
1. Employees are serious and open about their relationship
2. Employees are serious and want to maintain secrecy about their relationship
3. Employees are not serious about their relationship
In the first case employees should have little trouble signing the contract. But if the employees want to maintain secrecy about their relationship or they are not so serious then they would certainly not want to sign the contract and the employer could try to force the contract on the employees.
But does signing the love contract solve the purpose?
Just like any other contract, it wont. Infact the employee could later revert, saying she was forced to sign the contract at a difficult situation in her job.
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