What exactly is "Contractual" here ?

Contrary to the popular belief of keeping personal and professional relationships apart, workplace relationships have become a common phenomenon. Most of my classmates have cited rightly that workplace relationships are a consequence of spending long hours at work. The pros and cons of this kind of relationship are many. On one hand, dating can create a positive work environment around the concerned employee and on the other hand as suggested by Subheksha it can be detrimental to one’s career as it would be impossible to escape scrutiny and gossip.

Are organizations against these relationships is a question that needs to be answered first. In Infosys, there was a policy wherein if you marry a colleague, you get a B-segment car as your marriage gift. Likewise in TCS and Wipro, the employee would receive 1 lakh cash and a sponsored trip respectively. When I once discussed with the HR of my past employer, Infosys, where I worked for two years, she told me that these incentives were given to increase the loyalty of the employees.

While it is true that workplace relationships can lead to favoritism and sexual harassment. But like Partho Das has rightly pointed out that favoritism and sexual discrimination is not limited to people who are involved in some kind of romantic relationship. Favoritism occurs in organization largely due to organization politics and favoritism due to a romantic relationship can be avoided by placing one of the employees in a different project. Most of the companies have a policy against sexual harassment. Like in Infosys (my past employer where I worked for two years), we had a policy called ASHI, wherein employees could lodge a complaint in case they were sexually harassed.

Then what is the need and real purpose of the ‘Love Contract’. The sole purpose of many employees to engage into a romantic relationship is to get a promotion or recommendation. It has been found that many employees misuse the policy against sexual harassment when they break-up with their partners. Through this contract employers can easily deal with potential problems with the charges of sexual harassment at the end of a romantic work relationship. Love contracts can eliminate the possibility of a later sexual harassment lawsuit.

In this case Pritam and Jagruti are the two employees involved in a romantic relationship and there is an immense pressure on them to sign this contract. This kind of contract can create a feeling of insecurity among them and it also indicates that they are not completely trusted by their employer. Like Swati Jeyakumar has mentioned that signing this contract should be made voluntary and employees should not be penalized if they don’t sign. However, in case the employer finds that employees in a reporting relationship are dating, they should change team of either of the employees as soon as the project they are working on gets over.