By
Cori McClish
on
Feb
13,
2019
2 min read
0 comment(s)
With Valentine’s Day approaching, Cupid’s arrow could strike the hearts of some of your employees. Or maybe it already has.
Workplace romances are somewhat inevitable. After all, most full-time employees spend more time at the job site than they do anywhere else. Polls regularly demonstrate how common it is for people to meet love interests at work. Among the most recent of these is a 2018 survey by career website Vault.com, in which 52 percent of respondents said they had dated a co-worker.
RELATED: The Dos and Don'ts of Valentine's Day in the Workplace >>
According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), soured workplace relationships may lead to issues HR professionals and business owners cannot ignore – from accusations of poor judgment and lost productivity to ethical breaches, favoritism, and harassment. They even can prompt litigation if one employee or the other uses the relationship as a basis for a harassment or discrimination lawsuit, an outcome that may be more likely than ever before in the age of the #MeToo movement.
In a SHRM survey on office romance, only 42% of employers said they had established clear dating policies for their companies, even though such policies are the frontline defense in mitigating the risk workplace dating relationships pose.
Here are tips to consider when creating or updating a workplace dating policy: