Although day-to-day tasks tend to keep employees busy at all times, it is sometimes normal for employees to bond with each other. In fact, according to a study conducted in 2020 by the Society for Human Resource Management in the United States, 19% of the employees had a romantic relationship at work.
On the other hand, Adecco Colombia conducted a survey of 556 workers of whom 56% confessed to having felt physical attraction at work for one of their colleagues. Logical! After all, work is where you spend the most hours of your day. At Edenred Spain we also wanted to ask our users what they think about mixing love and work, and they have returned their evaluations. More than 50% believe that it is an explosive mixture, because they consider that it can generate conflicts within the company.
However, even today it is still taboo to talk about love relationships at work. Should we therefore prevent them? That would be impossible! But what is possible, given that they are natural and unavoidable, is to warn about the problems that can arise from them and to take some measures so that the personal does not affect the professional.
Maintain love relationships at work can also have its benefits, such as greater compliance with working hours on the part of the partner, greater involvement with the company as well as extra support in the event of any vicissitude...
However, they often have more disadvantages than advantages. Here are some of them:
Discussions can get personal and professional mixed up and an ambitious project can be affected by unnecessary conflicts.
With regard to the reconciling work and family life, If the two parties involved do not have similar holidays and schedules, it may be more difficult for them to spend time together.
On the other hand, if one partner has a problem with another employee, the other person may unconsciously develop a certain detachment towards that employee.
For the good of the organisation and without wanting to prohibit employees from giving free rein to their emotions, it is interesting to consider some measures that can help maintain productivity and a good atmosphere in the company.
Since we cannot fight feelings, we must understand love relationships at work as a matter of course and handle them with the utmost transparency. Having a very strict philosophy in this regard can lead to employees keeping relationships secret, which would certainly lead to rumours and gossip.
Although romantic relationships at work sometimes bring out the best in a couple, it is necessary to assign tasks that allow the two individuals to develop their separate skills. If you both embark on a project and personal problems arise, the end result of the work may suffer and affect the rest of the team.
Therefore, where possible, you can try to talk to individuals separately and ask them in a respectful way in which area they prefer to work or where they think they could excel most in order to assign them different tasks.
In this respect it is important to set limits and not allow personal arguments to take place during the working day. If, on the other hand, there is an argument at work between partners, a mediator can be helpful in dealing with the issue separately with each of the parties involved until an agreement is reached. In addition, this mediator could help to ensure that, in the event of a break-up, the relationship remains as cordial as possible.
Although transparency is good, if the couple decides to tell their superiors that they are having an affair, the manager should be cautious not to share it with other employees, in order to respect the privacy of the two individuals, if they ask for it. Otherwise, people may change their attitude or behaviour towards them.
When romantic relationships take place at work between a boss or a superior and an employee in a lower position, the treatment may be different from that of other employees. For example, the superior may be less demanding or too demanding in an attempt to show partiality. It is therefore necessary to point out such situations in order to prevent them from occurring.
Although a romantic relationship can pose challenges in the workplace, with these measures it is possible to keep productivity at bay and maintain a healthy and productive work environment. What do you think? Have you ever had a problem in your company as a result of a relationship?
