Should You Have a Dating Relationship with a Co-Worker
Relationships can be tough as it is, so having a dating relationship with a co-worker can sometimes not be the wisest choice. There are certain elements that are added to relationships when you have a dating relationship with a co-worker. Not to say that dating relationships are always unsuccessful when you are with someone you work with, but they definitely bring a different set of rules to relationships. There are more stories of relationships gone bad, then there are success stories for interoffice dating relationships.
It seems more and more people are getting into dating relationships with people they meet in the workplace because people spend a tremendous amount of their time working and plenty of jobs involve working overtime so it is understandable why office relationships and relationships are blossoming all over the country.
Many of these office romances are not simply passing fancies or casual flings as a survey conducted in 2003 by the American Management Association (AMA) found that an estimated 44 percent of office relationships lead to marriage. While this is an increasing number of successful dating relationships in the office there is still some risk involved in interoffice dating.
Approximately 41 percent of Americans aged 25 years to 40 years have admitted to being involved in dating relationships with a co-worker. Studies have shown that it is the office relationships that take place between managers and their subordinates that cause they greatest degree of problems for both people involved, but especially the staff member who has to report daily to the manager. The line between personal life and work life quickly becomes blurry and this can cause a very strained dating relationship. There are two types of office relationships that are the most damaging to both the efficiency and organization of the company these include the hierarchical romances where one person directly reports to the other person and the utilitarian romance where one person satisfies the personal and/or sexual needs of the other person in order to help the person gain an advantage in their career. Both of these relationships can have a detrimental effect on the people involved in them and they can also have negative consequences for other managers and co-workers in the company.
A very fine line exists between the professional life and the personal life and employers need to find that happy medium. The goal is to make everything at work run smoothly in order to encourage the productivity of employees while at the same time not delve too deeply into the personal lives of employees. Some companies believe that dating relationships will happen no matter what laws are put into place to prevent them so the best thing to do is to ignore them unless they present a real threat to workplace as a whole. This type of attitude is debatable, however at the end of the day it is up to company to decide what types of relationships are acceptable.