Relationships at Work, Essay Example

Outline

Thesis: personal relationships at work should not be established by employees because of distraction from work, negative attitude of colleagues and threat of sexual harassment complaints.

• The first reason personal relationships should not be established at work is the rise of sexual harassment accusations:

a) during relationships certain conduct is considered normal and natural;

b) after the breakup the attitude may become offensive and “unwelcome”;

c) the need for the employer to intrude in the resolution is essential.

• The second reason for which personal relationships should not be established at work is that the often cause unfavorable publicity and negative impact on the organization’s reputation:

a) romantic liaisons at work are socially disapproved;

b) provided publicity, they create scandals like in case with Bill Clinton;

c) creating negative images of faithfulness and devotion to family values can undermine the morale of the staff.

• The third reason for personal relationships not to be established at work is that they have extensive negative effect on the working atmosphere:

a) the emotional effect can hardly be quantified, becoming an unsolvable problem;

b) personal relationships give rise to jealousy, perceived unfairness and favoritism;

c) distraction from work is the most common effect of engagement in personal relationships at work.

Work is the activity that occupies the most part of people’s lives. Depending on the profession or rank, one can spend different periods of time at the working place; however, for the majority of the world’s working population it is much more than they spend with family, friends or having fun. For this reason it is a common practice that people, especially singles, establish personal relationships at work – according to Marks (1), they become even inescapable for those willing to have a normal social life and to work well at the same time. This tendency is likely to cause many problems and challenges for all participants of the working process: the couple, the employer and the colleagues. The reasons for them as well as their essence will be discussed further in detail.

Firstly, personal relationships bring joy and pleasure for the couple for as long as they are together; as soon as they part, the problems emerge. These problems may come from the inappropriate conduct of one of the parties who did not initiate the breakup but simply had to put up with it. So, they continue behaving the way they used to when being a couple. Yet for another party that manner of conduct may be already “unwelcome” – as Gross poses it, “the same conduct before the relationship ended could be interpreted as inappropriate after the breakup”. This fact gives rise to complaints of sexual harassment, which is surely a highly negative phenomenon for the employer, the staff and the whole organization.

In fact, the conduct of one of the parties may be well within the norm of accepted standards and not constitute a crime. Nonetheless, there is a clear difference between illegal and inappropriate behavior, so even if the person of who the other employee companied does not act illegally, he or she still may impede on others’ right to “moral free space” (Gross 1). On the other hand, the complaint may be filed by an oversensitive person who still has a set of negative emotions and accepts the revelations of normal friendly feelings as harassment practices. In such cases, the employer should seriously react to the problem.

So, what are the possible variants for the employer to use to solve the matter and not to violate the rights of both parties of the case? If the situation appears legal and no harassment is detected, the employer “would probably want to let the employees know that they are both expected to behave professionally at work and to remind them of the conduct standards applicable to the workplace” (Gross 1). But understanding sexual harassment complaints has a high risk of repetitive practices – the employer has to work out a set of specific standards and solutions to such cases, keep the documentation on these issues and pursue the single, balanced policy in this respect.

The second reason for not establishing personal relationships with colleagues it that once made public, they create notorious reputation for the company, the participants of the liaison and lead to large-scale resignations. The reason for them is that they generally express the public opinion about notorious romantic liaisons at the workplace – they violate the company’s code of conduct, they affect the colleagues’ sense of faith and dedication to family and spouses, and finally they undermine the overall performance of the company due to spoiling the moral and emotional climate. There is no surprise that personal relationships are so disapproved of at work.

In addition to the falling figures in the company, publicly infamous liaisons create a negative impression about the whole institution where the case was revealed. It is enough to recollect the situation with Bill Clinton and his sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky, which discredited the whole US government and created an unfavorable impression about the US executive power. Needless to say that the situation, though not being the initial cause, still instigated the President’s impeachment (The Times). This way the public image of the organization can be deeply affected, which will inevitably reveal itself in the productivity and profitability statistics.

Finally, it is worth discussing such impact of personal relationships on the internal working climate as a daily routine of co-existence of former couples, people who are in relationships at the present moment and those who feel attraction to each other, having the potential for becoming a couple in future. It goes without saying that such relationships cannot be ideal, with each member of the staff satisfied and happy. There are always people who have one-side feelings and who do not establish relationships because those who they love are either in relationships with another employee, or with the person outside the company, or have feelings towards another person with who he or she cannot have relationships for some reasons. In other words, the emotional atmosphere in any working team may possess various levels of complexity.

Certainly, such a state of affairs yields jealousy, envy, rivalry and other negative implications that personal relationships inevitably include (The Messy World of Personal Relationships at Work: Transparency and Trust Are Key). They cannot help spoiling the lives not only for those who are engaged in the wide scope of personal relationships described, but also those who are subject to non-reciprocal love, who are friends of participants thereof or independent observers. One should also think about such common influence of engagement in personal relationships at work as distraction. It is the most powerful argument against personal matters at work because it reduces overall performance of employees and makes them concentrate on issues far from work. People worry about their personal lives, forgetting about their work responsibilities, which cannot help worsening their skills, authority and professional competence.

Works Cited

Gross, Barrie. When Personal Relationships at Work Become Problematic. 2010. 26 March 2010. <http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/workplace-health-safety/11973-1.html>

Marks, Robin. ‘Twisted Knickers’. Working Stiff. 2010. 26 March 2010. <http://www.weblab.org/workingstiff/features/sex.html>

‘The Messy World of Personal Relationships at Work: Transparency and Trust Are Key’. 2010. 26 March 2010. <http://www.wharton.universia.net/index.cfm?fa=v iewArticle&id=1370&language=english>

Times, The. ‘Oral History: Monica Lewinsky scandal ten years on’. Times Online. 2008. 26 March 2010. <http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/wom en/relationships/article3185449.ece>