Working relationships | What is the etiquette around at-work romance?

Having a workplace crush isn’t a new phenomenon. However, when that crush turns into a fully-fledged romance, this can have a few interesting consequences for employers.

Many people meet their ‘other half’ from work. After all, work is where we spend most of our waking hours, so it makes sense that employees would develop meaningful relationships with one another that goes beyond being only colleagues or friends.

Interestingly, research indicates a large 82% of employees don’t report their workplace romances to their employer. A main reason for this, the study reveals, is that employees feel awkward approaching their employer to make them aware. And because their employer doesn’t have a specific policy on this type of scenario, many feel it’s not necessary to make their manager aware.

For those employers who do find out two of their staff are dating, there might be some difficult factors to navigate – this is particularly pressing considering between 24% and 75% of employees admit to having engaged in a workplace romance at some point in their career.