While some people find love at a bar, and others online, there are still plenty of people who meet and fall for each other at the office, and while that may seem like a good idea to some, if things fall apart it can have dire consequences.
A new survey reveals that there’s a good chance finding love at the office will end with at least one person unemployed. The survey, by hiring firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, finds that one-in-three office relationships will result in at least one person getting fired. What’s more, 17% of companies chose to move an employee to another department because of an office romance, while 5% of affairs have resulted in some sort of litigation.
Of course these figures don’t stop office romances from happening. In fact, reports suggest that 25% workers have been in, or currently are in, a relationship with a colleague.
For this reason a lot of offices have set policies about office romances. About 60% of companies say they have some formal policy, while 10% say that they don’t have a policy, but office romances aren’t encouraged. For those with policies, 70% have banned relationships between managers and subordinates, with 47% discouraging them. And there’s good reason for that, since two-thirds of HR execs say they’ve had to handle some sort of fallout from a bad office romance.
- ONE MORE THING! With the current #MeToo movement, you’d think companies would be looking over their policies, but the survey finds that two-thirds are comfortable with their current policy, with only 25% updating their policy.
Source: New York Post