Avoiding a P45 to nailing pillow-talk,
Another employment lawyer says it is relatively common for staff to end up moving departments or leaving an organisation entirely as a result of a relationship whether to avoid working with their partner or their ex.
Relationships can also adversely affect other colleagues. At a small London ad agency, two senior staff — let’s call them Phil and Jo — started having an affair. “Phil used his closeness to Jo to settle scores with others in the office,” an ex-member of staff recalls. “Jo issued written warnings to members of staff based on what Phil had told her. No one thought these were fair and they ran entirely contrary to how the office had been run before. Their closeness meant that no one in the office was talking about much else and it made the place toxic. It definitely accelerated my departure since I felt Jo would always be promoting Phil’s interests ahead of my own.” Eventually, the pair got their comeuppance — P45s.
There’s another situation where some employers do care who their staff are dating: if it’s a partner in another organisation but in an over-lapping sphere where conflict of interest arises. Careless pillow talk can cost jobs.
Sometimes these are not relationships people want to go public. A few years ago one of the journalists on our business desk received an accidentally forwarded email exchange between a PR woman at a private-equity house and a male financial journalist, both of whom were married. Her email asked: “Were we careful on Thurs?”, to which he replied: “No, I think we epitomised the linear opposite of careful. I did ask if you had any Johnnies, but you said: ‘What for?’... Was fun though. When can we do it again?” That story ended
with an injunction protecting the name of the PR woman’s firm; the journalist, meanwhile, got in trouble for bringing his company into disrepute.
If a relationship ends acrimoniously, then it may become company business too. “That requires real delicacy,” adds Gilbert. “Relationships don’t end mutually very often. It is often not known by the employer that there was a relationship until the fallout.” Sometimes, a relationship ending can lead to harassment. After two staff at a Silicon Roundabout tech firm broke up, the man bombarded his ex with text messages and emails that ran the gamut from the imploring to the aggressive. Despite the woman going to their HR department about his behaviour, he was let off with a warning. She believes this was because he was one of the company’s founding stars and the tech world typically subscribes to “the cult of the brilliant jerk”. She eventually felt
forced to find a new job.
When harassment claims like this arise, Gilbert says most companies do have adequate policies to handle it; they just don’t necessarily employ them: “It is common to hear, ‘I’m telling you this, but please don’t investigate, don’t make a fuss.”
If problems are raised but then not addressed, companies can find themselves torn to shreds if they end up before a tribunal: “If a person discloses a problem, nothing is done and then they don’t get a promotion. It’s quite a dangerous thing for that person to be able to say ‘I’ve been victimised’.”
No wonder many employers would prefer all staff to keep relations strictly professional, rather than open the organisation up to the many risks romance can entail. Though that is quickly forgotten when you spot your crush over the canapés.
@RosamundUrwin
Office relationships are everyone’s business. When people find out they talk of little else and it can be toxic