Office Romance: There's probably no law that will stop it, but relationships between co-workers can cause all sorts of trouble in the corporate setting

Love your work? Great. Love at your work? Maybe not-so-great.

Whether romance in the workplace involves a supervisor with an underling, an employee with a vendor or two folks in the same department, it is replete with possible, shall we say, entanglements.

Even if the relationships are legal, possible trouble snags can exist, making workplace romance a many-splintered thing.

Speaking at a breakout session during Parsons Behle & Latimer’s 30th annual Employment Law Seminar in Salt Lake City, attorney Liz Mellem said her advice is similar to what the law firm suggests to companies every year on various topics: “You can let this happen, but we don’t advise you to let it happen because it can cause you problems down the road.”

Mellem, a member of the firm’s Litigation, Trials and Appeals practice group, the Employment Law practice group and the Product Liability practice group, detailed many reasons for a company to institute a dating policy. They include alleviating turmoil, preventing loss in productivity and reducing the possibility of sexual harassment charges. Even consensual office relationships can lead to accusations of favoritism, workplace violence or retaliation if an employee believes he or she is being professionally disadvantaged because they aren’t dating a supervisor — unlike a fast-tracked colleague who is.

“Favoritism may not be wrong under the law, but — oh, my gosh — the headache it’s going to cause for you,” Mellem told the crowd. That’s especially true if there are a lot of young employees and they complain that other workers got a good work schedule by dating a boss. “Just the extra headache that this type of a thing can cause HR, you try to limit that, try to decrease it.”

Despite the growing need for workplace dating policies, only one audience member at the breakout session indicated one was in place at his office.

Still, statistics indicate the workplace romance is prevalent. While CareerBuilder’s annual Valentine’s Day survey this year reported a 10-year low in the number of workers dating co-workers — 36 percent, down from 41 percent the prior year — the percentage of workers who have dated their own boss was 22 percent, up from 15 percent in 2017.

Other survey results indicate that 31 percent who began dating at work ended up marrying, 24 percent had an affair with a co-worker where one person involved was married at the time, nearly one in 10 women workers whose romance soured left their job because of it, and 41 percent of workers had to keep their romance a secret.

“Office romance is experiencing a dip and whether it’s impacted by the current environment around sexual harassment or by workers not wanting to admit the truth, the fact remains that office romance has been around forever and will continue to be,” said Rosemary Haefner, chief human resources officer at CareerBuilder. “To avoid negative consequences at work, it’s important to set ground rules within your relationship that help you stay professional in the office and keep your personal life private.”

“Setting ground rules” is what a dating policy is all about, according to Mellem.

“One of the points of having a company dating policy is that you make sure that your employees know that … you want them to let you know about it, and that’s it,” she said. “They’re just letting you know. It’s not like you’re going to regulate it or monitor it — unless things get crazy. Because crazy creeps in sometimes.”

Assuming there’s nothing crazy, an employer’s concern should be limited to the potential or actual negative affect of the relationship on the employer, she said. For human resources professionals, the dating policy should essentially say, “Look, this is your life, but the workplace is my domain,” Mellem said.

A dating policy should discourage workplace romances and consider whether to include vendors, customers and other business associates. It can limit or provide guidance about romances, including whether to allow or limit supervisor/subordinate relationships or intra-department relationships. It can require that everyone behave professionally — no public displays of affection and no fighting — ensure that relationships are consensual, communicate standards of acceptable behavior and include regular training. A policy should be realistic and uniformly applied.

The goal is expressing that the employer is not trying to control employees’ personal lives but instead to ensure a fair, equitable and comfortable work environment for everyone, Mellem said.

“You want to limit your involvement, right? You don’t want to be in the middle of somebody’s love life, and that’s the point of doing a company dating policy: You are setting the parameters, you’re setting the expectation of what you’re going to do [and] the expectation for what they’re going to do.”

That expectation is founded on the premise that their dating life happens outside the workplace. They may drive to work together or work the same shift, “but they’re not lovin’ on each other in the breakroom and they’re not fighting in front of people, whether it’s customers or other employees. Their romantic relationship happens outside the walls of your company,” Mellem said.

One possible provision is that employees involved in a relationship sign a “love contract,” in which they agree that their relationship is consensual and does not involve any sexual harassment. It limits employer liability when and if the relationship ends.

“It can feel really juvenile, because you’re having them acknowledge that they’re doing something consensual and voluntary, that they’re going to behave professionally in the office and at work events, and that their relationship is not going to interfere with their work performance,” Mellen said. “It can feel very juvenile, but the risks of not doing this outweigh the challenges with it.”

The contract encourages communication between the two employees and the HR professional and provides a layer of defense for the employer if a harassment lawsuit is filed. Failure of an employee to sign is “a big red flag,” she said, “because there is nothing about this that is overly burdensome for the employee. It’s literally that they’re just going to keep acting the way they’re supposed to act in their work environment, but they’re in a consensual relationship with someone.”

Mellem emphasized that while workplace relationships can be discouraged, limited or subject to company guidance, a complete prohibition makes no sense.

“Honestly, it’s just not workable,” she said. “All you’re going to do is drive everything underground and that’s going to cause more problems for you.”

Mellem also noted that even very specific policies cannot foresee every possible iteration, twist or element of workplace romance.

“So, nothing about this is black and white,” she said. “There are no hard lines. It is very gray. We (attorneys and HR executives) deal in gray. That’s what employment law is: just a whole bunch of different shades of it.”