Flirting with Disaster?

Flirting with Disaster

While engaging in office romance seems like risky business, some couples think the bigger risk is not doing it.

BY Judtith Potwora

From the moment Ana sat down next to John in the back seat of a co-worker’s car, she felt sparks. “We just really hit it off,” Ana says. “We spoke the whole 45 minutes to the office and we completely ignored everyone else in the car.” But when he asked her out, she said no. At the time, Ana Mollinedo, vice president of diversity, communications and community affairs at Starwood Hotels, was only three weeks into the job. John Mims, then vice president of sales in the company’s Asia Pacific office, was passing through from his overseas posting. Even though company policy didn’t discourage dating among peers, Mollinedo was unsure. Frankly, she was afraid people might talk. “I’ve worked too hard for that,” she says.

Three years later, Mollinedo decided life was too short to pass up what seemed like a sure thing. When Mims was promoted to senior vice president of worldwide sales and posted at company headquarters, they mutually decided on a first date. Now, a year after that date, they’re husband and wife.

Looking back, Mollinedo, now 40, struggles to explain why she changed her mind about dating a co-worker. Mainly, it boils down to this: “Nobody will ever pay you enough to postpone the things that are a natural part of life, like falling in love, marriage and starting a family,” she says.“When you spend the majority of your life at work, where else are you going to meet people? I don’t hang out at bars.”

Happy workplace couples, like Mollinedo and Mims, reflect new thinking in the workplace: Finding your honey where you make your money isn’t out of the question anymore. The American Management Association found that 30 percent of managers and executives in its survey admitted to dating someone from work. And 44 percent of managers who dated someone from work said these relationships led to marriage. But workplace romances can be hot potatoes. Although Starwood, Mollinedo and Mims’s employer, doesn’t discourage peer-to-peer dating, it does have an office policy that forbids a manager from dating subordinates. Starwood is unusual, however; most companies – 75 percent, according to a 2002 Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) study – don’t have any office dating guidelines, which amounts to a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and a lot of sneaking around. And secrecy is something that makes co-workers uneasy, according to workplace experts.

THE RULES

“Dating in the workplace is no longer taboo,” says Charles A. Pierce, a professor of management at the University of Memphis who researches workplace behavior and sexual harassment. But office dating is frowned upon. A SHRM survey showed that 81 percent of human resource professionals see workplace romances as dangerous. That disapproval may be misplaced: The reality is that a healthy romance may be good for the workplace, according to Pierce’s research. In one of his studies, participation in a workplace romance had positive effects on job performance. Maybe it’s not so much the rules that determine whether an office romance hurts morale, but the romances themselves.

After all, not all romances are equal, Pierce says. “Good” romances are peer-to-peer, not superior-tosubordinate, and are motivated by a genuine desire to seek a long-term companion or spouse. These positive relationships steer clear of favoritism, avoid making other employees feel that the relationship is a secret and don’t involve extramarital affairs. Like any good romance, a good office romance has a big helping of trust. For instance, when Brad and Joan Buyce met at Ketchum, a leading public relations agency, they had worked together for three years before he asked her out. What took him so long? She had a boyfriend. But during the time when Joan wasn’t available, she and Brad got to know each other as co-workers, not lovers. “We built a lot of trust, a good working relationship,” Brad recalls. “And I think that was the only reason that things kind of took off later.”

Likewise, Ana Mollinedo and John Mims say they kept things professional in the office: no public displays of affection, no walking to their cars together, no office parties. (When she told her supervisor of the relationship after three months, he said, “John who?”) Even now, after marriage, Mollinedo and Mims keep their work life separate from their home life. The main thing is not to talk about co-workers with each other and never lie, Mollinedo says.

But no matter who you are or how you conduct your dating life, for many companies, all romances are potential problems. At UPS, for example, employees are discouraged from dating – or even marrying each other – because it can create the perception of favoritism. The rationale is that to combat favoritism a couple would have to be separated so their paths would never cross. “But that’s not possible here,” says Peggy Gardner, UPS public relations director. At UPS, Gardner says, it’s difficult to keep couples, or former couples, separate because the company has a policy of promoting from within. By the time someone reaches the executive level at UPS, she has worked as both supervisor and subordinate with many of her peers. In the end, the company figures it would rather lose an employee over an office romance than cause morale problems across the board. UPS does not specifically have a policy against dating in the workplace, but if two employees decide to get married and one of them holds a management position, the company encourages one of them to work elsewhere.

FATAL DISTRACTION

Love and work seem like such a natural mix, but sometimes the mix explodes. After all, working with someone is a great way to get to know him or her as a life partner – unless the romance turns into scandal. Sexual indiscretion is the most common single category of reasons that a CEO is let go, according to attorney Garry G. Mathiason, a senior partner with Littler Mendelson who specializes in CEO contracts. In his experience, “It’s a corporate secret that there is as much of this as there is,” he says. “All you see in theWall Street Journal is that somebody went on to another opportunity or retired. You don’t see it explained.”

Face it: Not all office romances are civilized and sweet. The dark side of office romances – sexual dalliances, stalkings and extramarital affairs – fuels a steady stream of sexual discrimination and sexual harassment cases. And it’s not just men who are misbehaving. For example, 20 percent of women admitted to being intimate in the office itself – in conference rooms, on elevators, in storage rooms and even on the boss’s desk – according to an online survey earlier this year by Worldwit.org, an online community for professional women. While men have historically been on the receiving end of sexual harassment and discrimination filings, women aren’t immune. As more women take the reins of power, they will find themselves the target of more sexual harassment and discrimination filings, Mathiason predicts.

The best way to stay out of trouble is to remember that “the office is not the same as the rest of the world,” says Janet Lever, professor of sociology at California State University at Los Angeles. After an office romance fails, calling up and begging for a second chance isn’t just pathetic – it’s illegal. That’s because pressuring a co-worker for romance after he or she has said “no” violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which makes it illegal to engage in unwanted sexual behavior at work.

LOVE BY CONTRACT

Legal experts recommend that executives not date subordinates – at least those who report directly to them. When executives ignore this advice, some try to limit possible damage with a “love contract,” a sort of prenuptial agreement for dating in which both parties agree that the relationship is voluntary and both agree to avoid favoritism and make nice through arbitration if the romance fizzles. Then the company pays the law firm to be on call to arbitrate if problems come up. All bets are off when a relationship goes sour, however, points out Chad Shultz, an attorney with Ford & Harrison, which specializes in workplace law. “The day you signed the love contract you agreed that everything was hunky dory,” says Shultz. “But then you come to your employer and say, ‘Now I’m uncomfortable because he’s bothering me.’ Well, now what does the employer do? That love contract doesn’t do him any good.” If cupid strikes in the workplace – especially between superior and subordinate – many legal experts advise you should transfer to another department or get another job. Then again, it depends. Joan and Brad Buyce met when Joan was an account supervisor and Brad was an account director (now senior vice president) at Ketchum; according to legal experts, this pair was the dreaded superior-subordinate type. But instead of turning into a sordid mess, the romance went smoothly with their bosses’ blessing. Both kept their jobs and they now live in the suburbs with a cat. Go figure.

PLAYING WITH MATCHES

The funny thing about office dating is that romance can still cost you your job. Just ask Harry Stonecipher the former Boeing CEO who was sacked earlier this year when he had an extramarital affair with a female executive at the company. Clearly, extramarital affairs at work make trouble for everyone: Co-workers are resentful because they’re often in on the secret and feel like they’re aiding and abetting the cheating, and employers don’t want anything to do with scandal. Dating scandal isn’t limited to co-workers, either. It also extends to on-the-job associates, such as when U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt married Abigail Perlman, a lobbyist for Altria Group Inc. (which owns cigarette maker Philip Morris). Blunt’s romance caused a national media frenzy in 2003, especially when he tried to insert tobacco-friendly language into a homeland security bill. The issue still follows them around today, and Perlman reportedly transferred to Kraft, another subsidiary of Altria. No matter the rules or risks, love is one of the biggest motivations in life. That’s why, even when faced with a policy requiring one of the members of the couple to leave the company, “many people would trade a job for a spouse,” Lever says. The bottom line: Employees are postponing marriage to a later age (or divorcing and remarrying), working longer hours and eschewing bars. Corporations are just catching up to the reality that, sooner or later, romance is going to happen. Most of the time things go smoothly, and sometimes they don’t. “People think office romance is like playing with fire,” Lever says. “It’s more like playing with matches. Occasionally, you’ll start a fire that gets out of control.” Either way, you’re sure to make sparks fly.