The Ugly Side Of Office Relationships

By Francis K Githinji

An office environment is always a good place to meet new people who have the same interests and sometimes, the goals and ambitions. An office is always a fertile ground for working colleagues to hit it off in a relationship. It is a place where you are bound to meet new people who will always be within your proximity. Office relationships are not bad and sometimes they work but what is their impact on the general performance of an organization? The most puzzling part about office relationships is that most of them degenerate into scandals. This has forced many organizations to discourage office relationships. They always advocate for mutual friendships where teamwork is propagated in order to achieve the goals of the organization.

Office relationships are known to overly affect an employees productivity. The relationship starts to take over the dedication and interest of an employee. The attention of the employee shifts from work related duties to relationship related obligations. Office relationships are enough to distract an employee from focusing on the set goals of the office. Productivity generally goes down as much time is spent and taken by this budding relationship. It does not matter whether it is the end of a relationship or the beginning of a new one, but all staff will form an opinion about a relationship that starts in the office. It has an overall effect of undermining and distracting the immediate team and beyond. The germination of a relationship marks the beginning of problems in an organization. This is because all employees can see what is going on and this affects their productivity.

Office relationships have also more complex issues to contemplate and consider. A growing relationship or affair in the office is a mine field literally speaking. First of all, does it conform to the organizations code of ethics? The mode of communication leaves a lot of loop holes that can be used against you if the relationship goes sour. This is especially true considering the endless and risky e-mails which are exchanged endlessly on a daily basis. The relationship gets intimate. Touching is no longer an option. But what are the legal risks involved? Remember the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal? Controversial insinuations of perceived unfair treatment and favoritism crop up to complete the show. It does not take a genius to see that once an office relationship goes bad these issues will land you in court as a harassment case.

It can have a devastating effect on the morale of the whole staff. An organization cannot have employees avoiding each other in the work place. There is the episode of colleagues who were in a long term relationship. The couple was very popular with the rest of the staff in the organization. When the couple eventually split, the whole staff was split into two opposing camps. Each camp supporting a different partner. The morale of the employees goes down to the last ebb. Office relationships affect the whole organization. It trickles down from the circle of the two love birds to the rest of the employees.

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