Romance in the workplace

Romance in the workplace can be explosive and destructive. But relationships can be managed – and sometimes turned into a positive force, writes GQ columnist Rebecca Newman

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A survey by Peninsula found not only that 89% of UK workers have a secret crush on a colleague, but that 62% have acted on this urge and had an office affair. This presents managers with an interesting problem. On the one hand, you seek to shape a team with close bonds; a degree of flirtation may well accompany, even promote this. On the other, an ill-starred liaison that jeopardises harmony and risks litigation is emphatically to be avoided.

To reach for the root of the issue, it is worth understanding what it is about the workplace that stimulates the libido. “Basically, it’s familiarity,” says psychology consultant Dr Sandra Wheatley. “We spend so much time at work that we know the people around us better than we know our closest friends: we know how to press their buttons, how to get under their radar.”

Throw in the clearly defined hierarchy of the office, the aphrodisiac nature of power and the well-trodden route of sleeping to the top and you have yourself a sexual hothouse.

Wheatley suggests affairs are a natural part of group bonding. “Famously, groups go through three stages: forming, or getting to know each other; storming, or figuring out how to interact; norming, when everyone settles in,” she explains.

“Relationships can be seen very much as part of storming in this evolution. A manager would do well to think of them as a way to get to know their employees, by watching how employees comport themselves to learn how devious, selfish, amoral they are, whether they are characters you want to represent your company.”

Moreover, workplace romances often have happy endings. According to research done by the Industrial Society, half of all office workers meet their partner over a heated desk, with high-profile examples being Bill and Melinda Gates and Michelle and Barack Obama.

On the other side of the coin, 54% of UK employees regret having had an office romance. And research done by Human and Legal Resources found that one in five workers who have embarked on them ended up leaving their jobs.

Three kinds of relationship fallout can be especially damaging to a company. The first is coercion or exploitation – particularly where one half of the couple is senior to the other. The second is scandal – which leads to disruption, mudslinging and prejudice. The third is litigation.

Say the worst happens and a toxic relationship explodes in your workplace. What then? A survey published by Andrew and Nada Kakabadse found that only 2% of people in the UK felt that delicate situations were best addressed by formal procedures. “Instead, professional opinion is increasingly viewing mediation as a better answer, and arbitration service Acas now recommends it as a valuable way of handling allegations of sexual harassment or misconduct,” says Dr Ridley-Duff.

How to safeguard your organisation from sexual fallout

• In your training programme highlight that while the company does not wish to interfere, it expects private lives to be separate from the office
• Similarly, highlight the potential pitfalls of using work email, Bloomberg terminal and so forth as a means to conduct personal affairs
• Make sure your office has a culture of free communication, so if problems occur you are the first to hear about them