Like a Virgin

OFFICE RELATIONSHIPS

In early 2012 I spent several wonderful days meeting the people of Northern Rock in their offices around the UK. As I have said Virgin acquired the bank from the UK government and it – Northern Rock, not the government – is in the process of being rebranded as Virgin Money.

As the ‘new owners’ one can never be too sure of the reception you might get from the staff at a newly acquired company, but to a person they were all quite delightful. I was there to welcome the Northern Rockers as the newest members of the Virgin family and so was thrilled to discover that a strong family spirit was already very much a part of the fabric of the bank.

Not only was I constantly meeting husbands and wives working in the same office but in several cases sons and daughters, too. I cannot think of a more glowing endorsement of an employer than saying that you have recommended it as a place where your immediate family should also work.

A couple of days after this experience I was having dinner with an old friend from New York who, out of the blue, asked me what Virgin’s policy is on what he described as ‘office romances’. It seems that his 28-year-old son works at a company that flat-out prohibits office romances and so the young man is having a miserable time trying to keep his three-month relationship with a female co-worker under wraps. Even outside the office they live in fear of being spotted together by an office ‘whistle-blower’ and it is putting a lot of stress on both of them.

I hadn’t thought about the issue before and to the best of my knowledge we have never had any problems with office relationships. We certainly do not have any ridiculous taboos that force people to make a secret of their emotions. Frankly, with people spending more time than ever before in the workplace and first marriages happening much later in life than they once did, falling in love at the office would seem more like an inevitability than a corporate misdemeanour.

My interest was piqued and so I bounced the question off a few heads of what I’d consider progressive companies and have come up with what seems like a sensible approach whereby employers and employees can avoid problems – without shooting Cupid down.

KISS (’Keep it simple stupid’) would seem to be applicable in more ways than one here. If single employees are told that they are free to have relationships with any consenting single colleague – single and consenting being the operative words – then it should be a win-win for company and employee.

By not driving people into covert relationships it should make it a lot easier to gain the respect and compliance of your people with a few practical and simple rules.

For obvious reasons, couples involved in a relationship should ideally not have direct reporting lines one to the other. Also, while every company and situation is different, having both work in the same department may not be a good idea. Too close a day-to-day working relationship, irrespective of how discreet and sensible the couple might be, does tend to invite problems. So some departmental distancing might be good for both.

One interesting suggestion I got was that, ‘They should act like a married couple around the office and have no outward displays of affection’. This may be a bit of a lame joke, but it is also wise advice.

One sensible suggestion I heard is not to use company email for passing of what we used to call ‘nookie-notes’ when I was a kid. Apart from anything else one simple errant stroke of a key can broadcast things to the whole company that are much better kept private!

Come what may, an office relationship can often end up with one participant or the other having to look for a job elsewhere. Ironically, whether the trigger is an unpleasant break-up or a wedding, the outcome can be exactly the same.

So any forward thinking company should think twice about the outright prohibition of office romances. Rather than implementing rules that (as in my friend’s son’s case) make for distracted and unhappy employees, it is surely smarter to put out some commonsense guidelines that will help them, and their co-workers, cope with their relationships.

I have always believed that a good company should behave like an extended family and, as anyone who has ever raised children knows, dealing with such slings and arrows is simply part of family life.