How can office romance be controlled in an organization?

[Etini]

It is often said that business and pleasure cannot go together. For a business to thrive well, pleasure must be released into the background. The big challenge is that you can't easily stop two consenting adults that feel some kind of attraction toward each other from acting out their feelings.

As a manager, what measures can be taken to control office romance so that it won't affect work and efficiency? Is it right to completely frown and condemn dating/ relationships in your business organization? Remember that love can be found anywhere. What would you do if you just discovered that two of your employees are in a relationship? I heard some people say that they would sack both of them. Some say they would order them to end the relationship as soon as possible. How best do you think office romance should be handled? How would you handle it if you were a manager of an organization?

 

[TOZZIBLINKZ]

It is often said that love happens anywhere, even in the most strange places. and so it will totally be unwise for a business manager to entirely exempt romance activity in the business organisation but to some extent it should be controlled. A male employee may suddenly develop a romantic likeness for a female employee, but that does not mean that he shouldn't make a romantic move towards such female employee in which he finds romantically admiring, but that should be done professionally with respect that the environment is a working environment and client and customers are more likely to come in to patronize the business sooner or later.

Shaking of hands and Little talks could be part of the game, but kissing and hugging all times shouldn't be done in the business premises or in the organisational premises what can be done elsewhere. Adding these as rules and regulation for employees and workers can totally make each employee to adhere to such rule.

 

[Etini]

@TOZZIBLINKZ You are right about setting the rules on hugging and kissing. Apart from the rules being put in place, two adults are not supposed to be doing public display of affection. What for? You are not the first person to love and you would not be the last. So why would an individual be doing that?

Another angle to look at it is that it might affect their outout in your company. Live comes with jealousy and two people in love can feel jealous if a colleague of the other gender tries to relate with the person he is involved with. This can surely affect the output of any of the two people involved.

Another thing is that injury to One is injury to all for people in relationships. You scold one person and the scolding is shared among the two lovers. If something happens and you punish one of the lovers, the other also feels bad or gets angry.

 

[eldavis]

Like they say prevention is always better than cure. Romance in the office is really not a bad thing, like you said love can be found anywhere and even anytime. There are cases where husbands and wives run the same business or operate in the same organization and they are doing perfectly fine. The reason why most business owners frown towards office romance is simply because most people involved do not have the maturity to know their limits. they tend to let their personal feelings affect work flow, there are even cases where the partners within the office end up working together to cheat the company. I think the best thing to do is set a no dating rule amongst your staffs.
Where i currently work, before given the job, i was told dating amongst staff was not allowed and if found my contract would be terminated. Having that in mind i believe most workers would abstain form it, and does who decide to still venture would be extremely mature about it.