Affairs in the Workplace and the Trouble They Cause, Essay Example

Most people usually spend half of their daytime working. While interacting with each other, employees often create certain kinds of personal relationships such as friendship, love affairs, and competition. Sometimes friendship between man and woman at work can grow into love romance. Some managers suppose that love affairs can improve working environment, support communication network development, enhance creativity and just simply increase work performance (Tourigny 2004). “Setting aside the potential benefits of interoffice romance, however, such relationships may also create strained work environment, personnel disruption, and perhaps most seriously, potential liability for employers” (Kastner 2006).

I have personally observed the situation when work romance made person commit suicide. Everyday communication of the employees grew in friendship and then in love. When the man understood that such relationships could ruin his family, he tried to stop them. Moreover, couple tried to work out this situation, but the woman kept bothering the couple. Seeing no other option to stop this romance and solve this particular issue man has committed suicide. Are love affairs ethical? Do they cause a lot more problems than benefits? Love affairs at work are considered to be an unwelcome activity. Western managers and supervisors usually try to restrict such relations. In fact, romances are usually viewed as rather troublesome forces that affect both work and employee’s performance.

To understand all negative consequences of love affairs in the work place one needs to monitor three stages of these relationships such as rising tenderness, romance itself, and break up. During the first stage of love romance person usually tries to get an attention of his/her colleague.  This process can hardly be unnoticeable and the employee can become a victim of other worker’s rumors. Though this outcome is less harmful than the others, such attitudes of the colleagues can become quite annoying, thus person risks losing competency in the eyes of a manager, which can affect successful promotion of the employee. Secondly, if person denies some other worker’s feelings he/she can be blackmailed. This can result either in firing employee or different penalties applied to him.

During love romance itself person can become a victim of sexual harassment. In fact, statistics has shown that most of the relationships between the boss and employee that resulted in sexual harassment usually started from innocent love romance and friendship. In one recent review of harassment statistics, it was noted some 40-90% of women and 15% of men reported being subjected to sexual harassment (Solie, 2001).  Being to open minded and letting other people of higher rank pay close attention to the employee, he/she risks getting two options: start looking for another job or suffer from sexual harassment on the everyday basis.

One should also consider the fact that break up period may result in worsening of communication network at workplace and team performance, negative reinforcement, and other unpleasant issues. For instance, during break up most of the partners stop communicating with each other. Being employed by one firm they usually have no other options but to interact with each other. Constant attempt to avoid communication with each other can decrease job performance. If partners are not of the same rank at work, such as employee and his manager, supervisor will most likely change his motivation appeal to negative reinforcement. Therefore, employee will suffer from skeptical attitude towards his/her job performance (Sills 2007).

Love romance at workplace can be not only harmful for the person as an employee, but can also ruin one’s personal life. It is not a secret that all mysteries are revealed over some period of time. Being involved in some kind of love affair is not a very pleasant activity if one is a married person (Kairuki 2009). In fact, those people dating someone at work risk getting divorce as they are cheating their partners. No one will agree that it worth losing life in a family. An example from my personal life shows terrible consequences of love romances at the workplace. That man could hardly imagine that the situation would bring so many troubles and turn deadly. Any time person gets involved in such love affairs he/she should consider risks that accompany them. Though love is an enjoyable feeling, it can also turn to be a real disaster. People usually tend to talk about its best side and pay no attention to negative consequences of love affair. Risks of loosing family, job, sexual harassment, and rumors of the colleagues are those outcomes that may follow love romance at workplace. Careful research shows the reason why managers try to prevent love affairs occurrence at workplace and monitor interpersonal communication. Indeed, person should think twice before showing one’s emotions to anyone else.

Works Cited

Kariuki, John. (2009). We are in love, but let’s keep in quiet. 12 March, 2009. <http:/ /www.eastandard.net/business/InsidePage.php?id=1144006529&cid=474&>.

Kastner, William. (2008). Corporate Affairs: An employer’s guide to restrictions on workplace relationships. 12 March, 2009. <http:/ /www.williamskastner.com/uploadedFiles/WillertPedersenCorpAffairsFall06.pdf>.

Sills, Judith. (2007). Love at work. 12 March, 2009. < http:/ /www.psychologytoday.com/rss/pto-20070305-000001.html>.

Solie, R. R. (2001).  Sexual Harassment Fact, Fiction, & Prevention. 16 March, 2005, <http:/ /www.pei-911.com>.

Tourigny, Louise. (2004). More than love and work: A critique of existing treatments of organizational romance. 12 March, 2009. < http:/ /www.midwestacademy.org/Proceedings/2004/papers/Tourigny_OBPROC_ 114.doc>.