Dangerous liaisons: how to prevent the office romance from ending in heartbreak

If you’ve ever found your­self gaz­ing long­ing­ly at a co-work­er across a Zoom screen, you’re not alone. Accord­ing to a study from the Soci­ety for Human Resource Man­age­ment (SHRM), half of work­ers in the US have admit­ted to hav­ing a crush on a col­league.

Although the same sur­vey found that 75% of work­ers felt com­fort­able with peo­ple engag­ing in a work­place romance, employ­ees should be aware that, in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, an office fling could cost them their job. 

One recent, high-pro­file exam­ple of this came when CNN chief exec­u­tive Jeff Zuck­er had to step down from his role at the top of the news broad­cast­er after fail­ing to dis­close his rela­tion­ship with CMO Alli­son Gol­lust. Fol­low­ing his res­ig­na­tion, Zuck­er said: “I acknowl­edge the rela­tion­ship evolved in recent years. I was required to dis­close it when it began but I didn’t. I was wrong.”

These types of sur­rep­ti­tious rela­tion­ships between col­leagues can cause prob­lems for busi­ness­es – espe­cial­ly if, as in the case of Zuck­er and Gol­lust, it involves a senior mem­ber of the organ­i­sa­tion. 

Emma Par­ry, who is pro­fes­sor of human resource man­age­ment at Cran­field School of Man­age­ment, says: “Work­place romances are com­mon but can also be seen as uneth­i­cal in some cir­cum­stances. This can be par­tic­u­lar­ly prob­lem­at­ic at work when pow­er dynam­ics are in play, for exam­ple if one part­ner is more senior than the oth­er and the junior part­ner feels pres­sured into start­ing or sus­tain­ing a romance.”

Zuck­er is not the first CEO to fall foul of hid­ing a work­place romance. For­mer McDonald’s CEO Steve East­er­brook was fired in 2019 after it was dis­cov­ered that he had what the com­pa­ny described as a, “recent con­sen­su­al rela­tion­ship” with anoth­er mem­ber of staff.

The CEO needs to hold them­selves to a high­er lev­el of account in these sit­u­a­tions, accord­ing to the founder of Lime­light HR Sal­ly Bendt­son. “The issues are dif­fer­ent at a senior lev­el. Because of the influ­ence and pow­er exec­u­tives hold, there is a greater chance of any rela­tion­ship being mis­con­strued.”

She adds: “The busi­ness also has to pro­tect itself against any poten­tial cas­es of sex­u­al dis­crim­i­na­tion or sex­u­al harass­ment and be aware that the indi­vid­ual may be mis­us­ing their pow­er or posi­tion with­in the busi­ness.”

The importance of relationship clauses

Slater and Gordon’s head of employ­ment law Jo Mack­ie claims that events like these high­light the impor­tance of includ­ing rela­tion­ship claus­es in any terms of employ­ment. “Organ­i­sa­tions need a rela­tion­ship-at-work pol­i­cy to give peo­ple the bound­aries that will allow the busi­ness to con­trol any poten­tial fall­out from the sit­u­a­tion,” she says.

Accord­ing to Mack­ie, these claus­es often stip­u­late that employ­ees should treat every­body equal­ly with dig­ni­ty and respect. They might also say that if you find your­self in a part­ner­ship or inti­mate rela­tion­ship with some­one where there might be a con­flict of inter­est – for exam­ple between a trainee and train­er or the head of mar­ket­ing and the CEO – this needs to be declared to HR. 

This is where Zuck­er and Gollust’s rela­tion­ship cre­at­ed an issue. Mack­ie adds: “Work­place rela­tion­ships can be absolute­ly fine, and busi­ness­es can’t pre­vent peo­ple from enter­ing rela­tion­ships with peo­ple at work, but it’s when there’s a con­flict of inter­est that peo­ple need to be care­ful.”

Get­ting HR involved means they can work with the man­agers and peo­ple involved to help resolve any poten­tial issues. Often a sim­ple solu­tion can be found, whether that is restruc­tur­ing a team, rear­rang­ing someone’s train­ing or ensur­ing nei­ther of the two par­ties are involved in deci­sions regard­ing remu­ner­a­tion or career pro­gres­sion. 

This can be more chal­leng­ing when a mem­ber of the exec­u­tive team is involved, which is why some busi­ness­es opt to include con­trac­tu­al claus­es that ban roman­tic rela­tion­ships between man­agers and sub­or­di­nates. How­ev­er, Par­ry believes such claus­es should be adopt­ed with cau­tion, as they are gen­er­al­ly impos­si­ble to enforce.

“If these poli­cies are very restric­tive, these might also be seen as a breach of the trust-based rela­tion­ship between employ­er and employ­ee,” She says. “The more crit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tion is to devel­op a cul­ture that is built on trust, sup­port and psy­cho­log­i­cal safe­ty. This will help ensure that employ­ees feel com­fort­able dis­cussing issues and com­mu­ni­cat­ing any prob­lems.”

Dealing with break-ups

This can be par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant when any rela­tion­ship between employ­ees ends in a break-up. “How do you deal with that at work when two peo­ple now loathe each oth­er?” Mack­ie asks. “HR can man­age all those things, but only if they’re aware of it. That’s why dis­clo­sure is so impor­tant.”

Some peo­ple may con­sid­er this an unnec­es­sary intru­sion into people’s pri­vate lives, in fact 77% of US work­ers who have been involved in an office romance said they did not dis­close it to HR at the time, accord­ing to the SHRM research. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, peo­ple are espe­cial­ly reluc­tant to inform their employ­er about their rela­tion­ship when they are involved in an affair. 

In 2020 Bill Gates stepped down from the board of Microsoft. It lat­er emerged that the com­pa­ny co-founder was being inves­ti­gat­ed by the com­pa­ny in rela­tion to an affair with a Microsoft employ­ee. Gates denied that was the rea­son for tran­si­tion­ing off the com­pa­ny board. 

Mack­ie says: “If peo­ple are hav­ing covert rela­tion­ships or affairs, it can be dif­fi­cult to han­dle because it’s people’s pri­vate lives. But line man­agers may need to know about the sit­u­a­tion because it can have all sorts of impli­ca­tions for the busi­ness and the indi­vid­u­als involved need to be made aware of their lia­bil­i­ties and risks that may arise if they’re caught out.”

While it’s hard to stand in the way of love, it’s impor­tant for busi­ness­es and their employ­ees to be aware of the con­se­quences a work­place rela­tion­ship might have. Insert­ing a well-word­ed rela­tion­ship clause into your com­pa­ny hand­book reduces the chance of any issues occur­ring fur­ther down the line and could pre­vent a PR night­mare.