Bitten By Love Bug?

In my previous post, I emphasized on loving your work so that it becomes easy for both the employee and the employer to have a healthy and productive employment relationship. But when it is extended beyond the work, it may give rise to certain complexities in the employment relationship equations the measure of which is very difficult to predict. Yes, we are talking about ‘Love Affairs at workplace’. It may sound interesting and seem to be the source of some meaty gossip for most of the people, but it actually has a serious aspect to it. If not from the employee, for sure the employers are taking it into consideration. And the funny thing is that there exists a contract for this too, called ‘Love Contract’ related to the issue.

Before we discuss what the main purpose of the contract is, we might want to look into the factors or situations which breed romantic relationship among the co-workers. First and foremost, when you spend more than 8 hours per day with the same set of people at same workplace, you tend to develop an emotional bond with them. In some cases, it crosses the line and makes you feel the need to be with them, to share your personal things with them and gradually you become dependent on them, emotionally at least. This, in some cases, leads to a romantic relationship between the co-workers. Also in many cases, people tend to get fed up by their own problems and seek some respite in fellow workers. This often is a symbiotic relationship which gradually, in some cases, takes the form of a romantic affair. Other factors like financial security and desire to succeed and other self driven motives are what make Love Affairs at Workplace commonly visible in organizations today.

Coming to the contract itself, like any other contract, this one also requires some agreements and norms specified in advance. The contract specified in the context talks about some kind of promise that the employee is expected to keep; a specific behaviour he or she is expected to demonstrate and the steps that the employer might take in case of non-adherence to the agreement. What can be the main motive of the employer to have such an agreement? Is it only about the effects on the performance of the involved employee or is it also about preserving a culture which discourages any kind of romantic relationship between employees because of other reasons? Let’s see from both the sides. Yes, there is a possibility of the performance of an employee going down because of his/her romantic interests within the company. It can be possible but then it is upto the employer to make sure that the ‘couple’ is assigned work wisely, in the same team or different teams. Today’s world leaves very little scope for anyone to take the risk of fooling around with his/her job which further reduces the probability of the performance deterioration of the employee due to ‘this’ reason.

The companies might also want to have such a contract to keep themselves on safer side. There have been many cases of sexual harassment in the industry and every time such an issue rises, it does no good to the reputation of the company. So, to avoid all that, the company might think of using that contract in case something like that crops up between the ‘romantically involved’ employees.

Also, it may provide the companies a ‘cause’ to delay promotions, cut salary hikes and even terminate the services of an employee as it was already written in the contract. In such case, there is very little the employee can do because neither can he disprove the claims by the employer nor can he call it as a ‘no cause’ notice.

But there are some exceptions to this also. The multi-national company where I used to work had a policy of rewarding its employees who marry other employees within the organization. In the sense, for all ‘in-house-couples’ there was some pre-fixed bonus which was given to them. No wonder there was nothing called ‘Love Contract’ in the company. In fact, the company encouraged the employees for such things. This only makes us feel that there is wide range of policies being followed in the industry regarding the same.

There is not much an employee can do in such situation. There is even stronger pressure of performing on him. And not only performance, the employee has to ensure that none of his/her acts within the company promotes favouritism. The best thing that the employee can do is to limit his/her relationship outside the premises of the company and in case he has signed such a contract with the employer, he/she should pay utmost attention on his/her behaviour and conduct towards his/her ‘love interest’ within the company. Such a contract is legal/illegal, moral/immoral; the discussion is not going to end soon. So, wise thing is to regulate self conduct and try being professional all the time.