Last fall my editor at Women's Business Minnesota Magazine asked if I would like to do the cover story for the February Issue. The topic was Office Romance. I turned in the story in early November. On December 30th it was announced the magazine had folded.
Here is that cover story --sort of. I've updated some statistics thanks to the 2006 Vault.com Office Romance Survey and I took out a reference to a former CEO who was fired for having an office romance. And, being that it was supposed to be a cover story for a magazine, well it's a bit longer than a typical post.
“Lou dates Mary” was episode 167-- the next-to-last episode of the long-running Mary Tyler Moore program ( 1970-1977). In the episode, Mary has yet another disastrous date, and shares with her friend Georgette that she wonders if she’ll ever find Mr. Right. Georgette then points out that Mary has known Mr. Right all along. With some encouragement Mary asks Mr. Grant (her boss) for a date.
The year was 1977, and while Mary and Lou didn’t get beyond a very innocent kiss before realizing that dating each other was not such a good idea, the writers of the show didn’t have to deal with the potential ramifications that could arise when employees begin a romance because it was the pre sexual harassment era.
In 1977, when that episode first aired, it would still be another nine years before the U.S. Supreme Court actually recognized the concept of sexual harassment. And, it wouldn’t be until 1998 ─ nearly twenty years after Mary and Lou exchanged that awkward kiss ─ that the Supreme Court ruled businesses could be held liable if sexual harassment occurred in their workplace.
With that ruling, businesses may have become more concerned about the potential risk of office romances, but the ruling has neither created a flurry of new policies about office romances and it certainly hasn’t discouraged them. In fact, the opposite is true—office romances are on the rise, and corporations are dragging their feet when it comes to dictating policy and procedure on dating.
According to the 2006 Office Romance Survey by Vault.com, 58% of all workers say they have had an office romance ─that is up from 48% in 2003. The real news is the number of employees having romance in the office 27.5% of employees admit to having had a tryst in the office, up from 23% last year.( more about that later in this post)
During the early 70s, the TV series M*A*S*H starring Alan Alda had a storyline between the very single and sexy Hot Lips Houlihan and the bible thumping, very married Major Frank Burns. They tried to keep their torrid affair a secret. It didn’t work. Their liaison became common fodder for everyone. Over a period of years, they broke up, made up, and when Houlihan finally married someone else, Col. Burns took it so hard he was transferred back to Indiana
Major Burns may have been the person to leave the workplace in the fictional world of M*A*S*H, but historically it’s been the woman who loses her job, says psychologist and radio commentator Dr. Joy Browne. “I am not in favor of office romances. Work is about competence. Love has nothing to do with competence.”
American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead was also no fan of the office romance. She wanted to see complete ban on any sexual involvement in the workplace, because she believed the non sexual environment would create a way to enable women and men to work together effectively and to respect each other as individuals.
The way most companies deal with the issue is to not deal with it.Only 21% of the people responding in the 2006 Vault.com Office Romance study said their company has a policy on office romances.( That is up from 17% in 2005) In 2005 39% said their companies had no such policy and another 44% had no idea whether or not any such policy exists.
That’s no surprise to Teresa Thompson, an employment attorney with the Minneapolis law firm Parsinen Kaplan Rosberg & Gotlieb P.A.
“Most companies have policies on sexual harassment and they forbid supervisors from dating people they supervise, but they have not taken it to the next level on creating policies and procedures for professional behavior on dating.”
During its ten year run, the friends on Friends had multiple office romances: Joey dated a fellow actor in a play that had disastrous consequences, Rachel dated her assistant Tag, and Ross dated one of his students. When Monica questioned him about the ethics they had this exchange:
Ross: It is frowned upon. Especially by that professor we ran into last night, Judgey Von Holier-than-thou.
Monica: Well, Ross, you be careful now. You don't want to get a reputation as, you know, Professor McNails-his-students.
Thompson believes the lack of dating policies is a problem. “Only about 25% of companies have policies regarding fraternization between employees. Others may have an unspoken policy about dating people that you are not directly supervising, but most do not.”
While that may surprise many, Thompson says the lack of policies is rooted in a tradition where historically businesses have wanted to stay out of people’s private lives. A 1994 survey by Fortune Magazine seems to support that contention.
As late as 1994, 75% of CEO’s who participated in a survey for Fortune Magazine said,
“Romances between workers were none of their business.” However, in the same survey, 86% of CEO’s acknowledged “that such goings-on can increase the possibility of favoritism, either real or perceived, and 77% noted that consensual flings that turn sour can expose the company to the threat of sexual harassment lawsuits.
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Even when it is not a supervisor-supervisee relationship, Thompson says companies are at risk of being sued for a sexual harassment claim. “Most office romances begin as a consensual relationship. It is only when things don’t work out that one of the parties charge it was never consensual.”
According to Thompson, about 50% of all office romances fail. So in essence, companies that don’t have policies about dating are playing a kind of office romance roulette. As Thompson points out, prior to that 1998 Supreme Court ruling, companies that claimed they weren’t aware of the relationship couldn’t be found liable. Now they can.
The challenge for business owners, says Thompson, is on the one hand they don’t want to say employees can’t date; on the other hand, they could face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines because of sexual harassment claims.
Because of frequency of office romances and the litigious nature of our society, Thompson believes more companies should consider using a Love Contract.
Love Contracts were created to protect companies from sexual harassment claims. The concept is simple: when two employees start a relationship they go to their supervisor and declare they are in a consensual relationship. The company then has the couple sign a document stating the relationship is consensual and that neither party is being sexually harassed. These contracts typically state that if you do begin to feel uncomfortable, you agree to follow company reporting procedures.
Because of privacy laws, it is difficult to find out if any companies are currently using this relatively new contract.
In the first episode of Grey’s Anatomy, Meredith Grey, a surgical intern goes to the hospital on the first day of her residency only to discover that the guy she thought she was having a one night stand with the night before was actually the attending physician. While it was clear that both understood the relationship was violating hospital policy, their passion kept the relationship going until his wife showed up.
When it comes to office romance, there are two distinct camps: those that say it’s inevitable and businesses simply need to have policies and procedures to deal with it, and those that say avoid office romance like the plague.
She was the teacher. He was the student. She thought he was obnoxious. He thought he knew a lot more about the business then she did. So began the relationship of Janet and David Berry.
The year was 1971. Janet was one of about thirteen women working in sales for what was then IDS---the forerunner to Ameriprise, Inc. Janet had been with the company one year and was asked to teach a ½ day class at their regional “new man school.”
It was there that she first encountered David Berry, a new recruit. “He was in the front row, slouched down in that male superiority position. He was wearing black and white plaid double knit pants, black and white saddle shoes and horn rim glasses. He kept interrupting and wouldn’t shut up, He was so cocky—so full of himself,” Janet remembers.
David adds, “Our relationship kicked off with I hated her, she hated me. She was saying things I didn’t believe. She was cocky, overconfident, we just butted heads.”
As it turned out, of the ten offices David could have been assigned to, he ended up working in the same office as Janet. They were fierce competitors and working together didn’t exactly change their first impressions.
“I didn’t like him.” said Janet.
Then one night about two years later, the entire sales team went out for drinks. “At some point Janet and I were the last two sitting at the bar,” recalled David. “I don’t remember what we were talking about but I remember putting my hand on hers to make some point and truly something happened at the moment─an electricity zapping between our hands.”
While they didn’t hook up that evening, Janet and David eventually became a couple, and like many office romances, they were determined to keep it quiet.
“The last thing we wanted was anyone in the office to be aware of this. No one said anything but they were picking up on it,” said Janet. “Within six months the relationship was out in the open.”
A couple of years later, David left the company to take a management position at a competing firm. One of the people he hired for his sales organization was Janet.
“Now we had a potential conflict of interest.” There hadn’t been a conflict when we were both in sales,” said David who explained, “Our industry was different. In sales you don’t have a title; you’re not worried about a pay raise or your next performance review because everything gets wrapped up in results. You don’t have the same hierarchy in sales that you would have in corporate jobs. So in sales you are accepted for your actual performance.”
Both David and Janet say they think that scenario could still be successful in today’s work environment because of the nature of being on 100% commission as a sales person and because as Janet explained,
“When we were in the office we were business people first. We never brought our relationship into the office. We would go days without talking to each other in the office.”
Experts will say no matter how diligent a couple is in trying to keep their personal lives personal and their work lives professional “people talk.” April Masini editor of the online dating and relationship magazine, AskApril.com, says when it comes to office romance, “say nothing and do nothing that you do not want everyone else to know about.” Aprils says this means refraining from chit-chat with the girls at the water cooler about his size or performance and no pillow talk with him about how much you loathe your boss.”
When Sally Albers landed her first job at CBS sportsline.com in Florida, she ended up dating and eventually marrying the guy who sat two cubes away. While Sally, who was 23 when she started dating Jason Singer, wasn’t concerned if people in the company knew about their relationship, Jason who was 27 at the time, was very nervous about the workplace.
“He was very afraid that I was going to sit on his desk and say, “hey baby,”. He wanted to keep it very professional. If I did come over to his desk, he’d always ask what I was doing there. “Sally says that she would have been much more lackadaisical about it because so many people at the office were dating, “I think our generation has grown up slightly different. We are not as serious about stuff.”
Despite Jason’s rule for no contact during working hours, they did “IM” each other throughout the day and made a point of going to lunch together everyday. Sally and Jason now live in the Twin Cities and still work for the same company but in different departments. They still try to go to lunch together as often as possible.
Syndicated radio talk show host Dr. Joy Browne is not in favor of office romances and is definitely not in favor of lovers “IMing” each other all day.
“IMing is basically stealing someone’s money. I’m paying you to work. If you are doing something that has nothing to do with me, then you are taking money you haven’t earned,” says Dr. Browne who adds, “combining work and love is very American because it’s very efficient.”
April Masini who has a much more liberal take on office romance says its fine as long as you follow some basic guidelines and one of those is to avoid those lunch hour dates. “Agree to date out of work hours, but don’t turn a business lunch into a romantic lunch.”
While Sally and Jason’s romance ended up with a wedding, Sally says, "If you break up that‘s the weird thing. “ Sally explained, “there were a couple of bad breakups were co workers dated and then one ended up cheating with another co-worker. Everyone talks and whispers about it.”
Which is why Lori E (not her real name but she asked for anonymity because of a difficult divorce) says she would think twice, three or four times before ever having another office romance. As far as office romances go, Lori’s situation was about as ideal as they come. They met a one of the company clubs. For two years they were just friends, never seeing each other than at club events. When they started dating, Lori thought she was avoiding the typical office drama that accompanies an office romance, “We worked in different departments. We even worked in different buildings.”
However, like Sally and Jason, Lori and her then boyfriend made it a point to go to lunch together every day. Unfortunately, the marriage lasted less than a year.
“We were both actively involved in the club so that makes it harder,” says Lori. “He had a lot of friends in the building. A few times I’ve gotten dirty looks. If it doesn’t work out you have to endure the questions, the gossip and the judging that can occur.”
Just how much office energy is spent chatting about co-workers’ romantic entanglements is anybody’s guess. However, anyone who has worked in an office where there is any kind of romantic intrigue—particularly when it involves people who are married ─ knows that relationships can take up a lot of oxygen among workers.
It can also put a company at risk for a hostile workplace lawsuit. “Often it’s not the charges of sexual harassment that get a company in trouble but the other employees who observe the relationship and often feel there is favoritism or that they are missing out on information,” says Thompson who recommends that companies have very specific codes of conduct and professionalism that are very explicit. “The risk of not being explicit is that people have very different concepts of professionalism.”
“It’s not talked about," says Arlene Vernon an HR Consultant who works as a traveling HR department for small and medium sized companies. Vernon says in all of her years of consulting she’s only been asked about the issue a couple of times. “One was a doctor who saw all the nurses as his dating pool. He would hit on everyone who came near him. I talked to him but the behavior didn’t stop.”
Vernon says, “this will sound like a nerdy HR comment but managers need to ask themselves what culture I want to create? In a small business the relationships are even more obvious and there is great impact on morale for not taking any action.”
Jan Hoistad, a psychologist and head of Big Picture Partnering agrees with Vernon,"My stance with managers is to let them know I believe it’s their job to create a healthy environment and to verbally out loud send out a message, not in a punitive or judgmental way, that she values healthy adult behavior and expects it.” Hoistad adds, “People are open to healthy behavior when its role modeled.
Liz Ryan, president of WorldWit, the largest online community for professional women is a workplace expert and former corporate HR executive, not only believes the office is a fantastic place to meet a romantic partner, she says, “there is no better place.”
“It’s the opposite of a blind date. You’re at work. You’re safe. You see how their brain works. You can learn a lot before you go out.”
For all of her enthusiasm for meeting a mate at work, she is a staunch believer that propriety is the best policy.” No arranging dates, no footsy in meetings. No slipping and calling your lover honey or sweetie. It’s gross. It’s insulting.”
Earlier in her career Ryan worked at a company that employed a lot of twenty-somethings. “There was a lot of getting together and breaking up and we needed a program to help them understand how to keep their love life out of the office.” Women she talked to would typically respond, “Have I destroyed my career?” According to Ryan the guy’s response was, “I’ll take my chances. I’m 26. I don’t need to have you counsel me.”
On the completely opposing vantage point sits Dr. Joy Browne who admitted on her program that she once had an office romance. Now, her recommendation to people who are attracted to someone at work is, “Flirt your brains out. But don’t throw yourself at that person until their going away party. And she adds, “sublime like crazy. Go home and have sex at home with whomever you’re with.”
Regardless of what anyone thinks and what the policies may state, co-workers who take a fancy to each other are likely to ignore the warnings, and simply go for it. Like the thousands who have done it before them, young lovers, regardless of their age, always think, they can handle it. And, if current trends in high schools continue, the situation will only become more dramatic in the next few years.
In October 2005, The Washington Post ran an article about the proliferation of sex occurring on school property—in closets, stairwells and the ever popular auditorium. In that article , Naomi Gittins, a staff attorney at the National School Boards Association said, “ Many schools don't have rules specifically banning sex on campus but punish students who do it through a clause prohibiting "immoral conduct" or behavior that offends the community's morals.” Gittins says more specific policies would make it easier for schools to defend themselves against legal challenges.
Regardless of policies, there are some observers who believe the trend will only escalate because teens do whatever they think their peers are doing, whether they are or not. "The thing about young people is when they see things in the mass media and they think it's going on, they start doing it," reported a Maryland education official.
Whatever the current plotlines on The O.C and Laguna Beach are portraying, it appears that future employees may be bolder in transforming the Office Romance to Romance In The Office
The 2006 Survey by Vault.com confirms my suspicions. The lead of its 2006 survey is just this -- that more people are smooching on the clock.
"Survey respondents are not shy about where they are getting it on. Oft-cited office locales include: the conference room, the boss's office/on the boss's desk, the office of one of the participants, the bathroom, server room, elevator, and supply closet. According to one survey respondent, "The danger of getting caught made it really exciting..."
On Sunday 's(February 12th episode of Grey's Anatomy, the staff is faced with the possibility that a bomb could blow up the hospital to smithereens, Izzy confronts Alex and says it has been 8 months since she has had sex and she wants him to take off his pants right now. He does. They do it in the intern's break/nap room.
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