Here's How You Don't Let Love Sabotage Your Workplace Emotional bond among people at work is inevitable. And how much ever you ask your employees to shield their emotions, people will connect to each other.
By Vanita D'souza •
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Romances can flourish anywhere and anytime. And your workplace is not immune to the blooming office romances
Having said that, there is a lot of apprehension among the companies to let offices affairs thrive as they believe that it will compromise the employee's productivity.
But times are changing and with the advent of the digital world, people are coming closer. In such cases, should you let it thrive or kill it at the beginning of it?
Fellow entrepreneurs and experts share their opinion on how you should deal with in-office romances.
Develop an Environment
The emotional bond among people at work is inevitable. And how much ever you ask your employees to shield their emotions, people will connect to each other.
Hence, Aditya Narayan Mishra, CEO and Director of CIEL HR Services suggests team managers, HR folks and organizational leaders to build an environment wherein emotions are directed towards positivism.
"Criticizing employees for developing relationships beyond work is not going to help, especially in today's times where we have an increasing number of millennials in the workforce," he shares while adding that, "The ideal way will be to talk about it openly and set norms and boundaries around inter-personal relationships. This will build transparency and professionalism at work. As long as people understand that certain kinds of relationships could be distracting and counter-productive, it is good enough."
Sensitizing Your Employees
As millennials take over as the majority in the workforce, it is necessary to keep the workplace fun and active.
However, the management should create a line wherein employees respect individualism.
FourKites prefers the HR to share guidelines both directly and indirectly by way of sensitizing the group on harassment at workplace and also upholding the respect for the individual as essential to team working.
On asking if they okay with a workplace romance, Neeraj Sharma, Senior Director – HR, FourKites say it is fine unless one of them is not reporting to the other and if at all they do, "they would be trained on conflict of interest related code of conduct."
Approachable Approach
The trick to manage interpersonal relationships in offices in simple, keep things approachable and warm while discussing such situation with employees.
Which is why, Ishween Anand, Founder & CEO, Nyassa feels people should stop playing the blame game or blindside other co-workers or a boss.
Additionally, if you are in a relationship with a fellow mate while working in the same team or same project, remember to share credit for accomplishments, ideas and contributions. This will help you keep things transparent both at the personal and professional end.
Having said that, the entrepreneur also feels it is extremely important to put forward rules/ guidelines to maintain office decorum.
"Without rules employees are allowed to do whatever they want. Therefore the HR has to set policies and processes for smooth office operations. This will only help your company to function appropriately," he added.
