If you need yet another reason to know why everyone outside of HR thinks Catbert is not a fictional character, look no further than this data point: “32 percent of HR professionals say employers have the right to prohibit workplace romance between employees.”
On this, the most romantic day of the year, a full third of HR monitors are poised to swarm the office back stairways and broom closets, and snoop amongst the flower arrangements for evidence of co-worker love. Had Toby been the Evil HR Lady Jim and Pam would never have married.
You think I joke about that snooping around? Indeed I do not. No less an authority than that most sober-minded of professional organizations, the Society for Human Resource Management, says that two-thirds of the time HR finds out about co-worker coupling from the office gossip mill. Almost as often — 61 percent — someone tattles. (If there’s gossip, there’s also telling, otherwise it wouldn’t be gossip.)
How often does an office romance happen? CareerBuilder says 38 percent of workers have had an office fling; 16 percent have had more than one. A third of the time the romance lead to marriage. About a quarter of those who have had an office romance admit it was with the boss or some other higher-up in the company — a big no-no say SHRM’s HR survey takers. Nearly every one of them (99 percent) said love between the boss and a direct report is strictly against policy.
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” wrote Elizabeth Barrett Browning, never thinking HR would codify them and assign them penalties. But sure enough, 42 percent have a written or verbal policy that includes termination for the wrong kind of love.
Reason No. 29 why HR is more like Catbert than Dogbert: 81 percent of companies provide zero training for workers or managers about the office romance policy.
One thing about co-worker dating, the couples don’t much discuss work. A survey from Workplace Options says the majority of them spend less than 30 minutes talking about work. The biggest share spend less than 10 minutes on that subject, even when one of them is the boss.
Sometimes that work thing comes in handy. Faking a work emergency to get out of a date has been used by 10 percent, presumably not co-workers in the same department.
HR can relax its vigilance in one regard: co-workers as matchmakers are in decline. So is meeting through friends and having mom set you up. Taking their place: the Internet and bars, which quite nicely explains the CareerBuilder finding that the leisure and hospitality industry (think bars and restaurants) have 57 percent of their workers dating each other.
