Playing the Dating Game: Workplace Edition

Valentine's Day is a great time to revisit your policy on workplace romance and how to handle relationships between employees that go beyond camaraderie and blossom into couplehood.

Let's take this topic one step at a time: Before Valentine's Day, we'll tackle why it's critical to implement a workplace dating policy. Next we'll address best practices for employers in implementing a dating policy that's right for their workplace culture.

Court dockets are filled with harassment lawsuits based on romantic workplace relationships that turned sour and caused chaos for the organization. Worse still, if one person in the former relationship reported to the other—a manager and a subordinate—the employer may be held liable for a manager's proven acts of harassment.

This is even more true when an adverse employment action is involved against the employee bringing the compliant.

Sexual harassment is prohibited by the federal law known as Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Texas Labor Code, each of which applies to employers with 15 or more employees. It's also enforced by local municipalities that mirror the federal and state statutes.

For smaller workplaces not subject to these laws, such misconduct could still prompt a viable lawsuit based on a variety of other related legal avenues.

It's common that organizations overreact by drafting what amounts to a "love contract" that can overcomplicate the simple restrictions around workplace dating that ensure employee safeguards from harassment and prevent liability for the employer.

But failing to establish any policies on whether coworkers can date each other can lead to low morale, damaged productivity and inconsistent management practices—and that's if the relationship goes well.

It's important that employers establish a dating policy that spells out in plain language what will be tolerated and what is strictly prohibited, along with employees' responsibility in coming forward with consensual relationships to management, particularly in today's long-overdue climate of supporting victims of workplace harassment in a way we've never seen before.

Rather than institute any sort of ban on dating among employees, policies that exert some degree of control over workplace relationships are usually more effective.

Dating at work certainly can cause a whole host of problems for all involved, but a total ban ignores the reality that many dating relationships are formed in the workplace, and then employees who want to date each other are forced to lie or sneak around.

In Rules of Engagement, Part 2, go beyond a ban on workplace dating for help in crafting a policy that's a good fit culturally for your organization while protecting against liability from accusations of harassment and hostility.

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