Work is a fertile ground for romantic relationships to flourish, and there are good reasons why we often fall in love with our co-workers, whether in person or virtually.
Sending a winking emoji to a colleague in a message is sure to be less exciting than exchanging a shy look at the coffee maker. Yet even as the fleeting interactions that once fueled workplace romances have become impossible during the coronavirus lockdown, colleagues have been finding ways to find each other — even without meeting tables or desks to fly over.
Data from the American Society for Human Resource Management for February 2022 suggests that romance in the workplace may have increased with employees at home. A third of the 550 Americans surveyed said they started or maintained a relationship with a co-worker during the pandemic — an increase of six percent from pre-pandemic days in 2019.
Even during the global pandemic, workers have found some way to continue dating co-workers - a fact that confirms the inevitability of romance in the workplace, which is a fertile ground for love, even though many companies frown on dating between colleagues as an HR nightmare.
Experts say there are specific reasons why workers have not stopped communicating with colleagues - even while in isolation during a global health crisis.
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Although it's somewhat taboo, 75 percent of respondents to the American Association for Human Resource Management said they had no problem with their co-workers dating each other. . (After all, half said they fell in love with a classmate at some point.) And while workplace romances are a headache for many companies, they've been around for decades - if not centuries.
"Even back in the industrial age, there was still some discussion about people being attracted to each other in the workplace," says Amy Nicole Baker, a professor at the University of New Haven in the US who studies workplace romance and organizational psychology.Since the 19th century, there has been a frenzy and disapproval of romantic relationships in the early days of administrative work, with men and women in offices engaging in "behaviours without a name," according to critics of the time.
But many lovers meet at work, and it doesn't necessarily end in scandal (on the contrary, it can lead to a fairytale ending, as happened with former US President Barack Obama and his wife who met at a law firm in Chicago when they were in their twenties).
Data from 2017 shows that up to one in 10 heterosexual couples in the United States say they met at work. This makes sense, given that some data shows that people between the ages of 20 and 50 in the US spend nearly four times more time with their co-workers than with their friends.
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It's not surprising that many people care about their co-workers, given that work takes up more and more of our time over the years," says Vanessa Bones, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University in the US who studies the dynamics of romance in the workplace.
While the most popular ways to meet colleagues are changing — more people now meet online, for example, and fewer people meet through family friends — finding love at work is statistically “a constant,” he says. Baker says.
This has been a constant during the pandemic, when it can be less risky to communicate with colleagues, because you're out of sight of your boss or teammates. (Some colleagues even work secretly from each other's homes as the telecommuting period extends.)
“As long as people are interacting in a co-working environment, you see the underlying mechanisms of human attraction happening” – whether that environment is physical or virtual, says Becker. And the psychological factors behind these mechanisms inevitably keep colleagues pushing for something more, even during a pandemic.
The workplace is central to two of the main drivers of attraction development, says Amy Gordon, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan in the US, who studies relationship psychology. Spending a lot of time with someone in an environment like the workplace "is very likely to set the stage for romance, because of all the factors that we know contribute to romance: habituation and familiarity."
First, the more a person sees something (or someone), the more likely they are to like it. This habituation is a psychological bias called the "mere exposure effect." Gordon says that simply seeing someone frequently can lead to a craving for them.
Similarly, research on workplace romance has shown that being around someone for an extended period of time can help favor that person; The more often we see someone physically close, the more we interact with them, and the faster the attraction between people. (This bias can even apply to bosses who see employees for longer periods.)
But this prejudice is by no means limited to physical proximity. "It's also an emotional and intellectual closeness," Baker says. Whether it's via email, Zoom or Slack, it means that "you're still interacting with each other," says Baker. This exposure and interaction still increases preference, regardless of physical location—which may explain why romance between colleagues persists in the age of remote work.
Another factor that transcends the physical presence of colleagues in the workplace is people's preference for people who are similar to them – which can extend to work, given colleagues choosing the same profession and company.
"If you're both lawyers or you're both trained in the same way, or if you both think about the world the same way, that similarity will also enhance admiration and understanding," says Baker.
This chemistry can be enhanced when people tackle a problem together. Research has long shown that stressful situations can build social bonds. But the same phenomenon applies "absolutely" to the workplace, says Baker. "Think of all the stressors that are common in the workplace. You have crises coming: it could be a bad boss, it could be the logistics of the job, long hours, intense work." .
While workplace romance is practically inevitable - and widely accepted - it can still be complicated.
First, colleagues meeting together may increase the risk of sexual harassment allegations and reports of hostile work environments, as well as create conflicts of interest. More commonly, romance between colleagues in the workplace can make the rest of the team uncomfortable, which ultimately affects performance.
Observers of these romantic relationships can worry, because you're moving away from very clear standards in the workplace about acceptable behavior. In an inappropriate way," says Pons. "You don't know what's appropriate anymore."
Since workplace romance isn't going away, some experts say smart companies will allow employees to date, while making sure not to cross career lines.
"Managing this, rather than pretending it doesn't exist - or shouldn't exist - is the way to go," says Johnny C. Taylor, CEO of the American Society of Human Resource Management.
And Taylor believes that mandatory disclosure of this romantic relationship—at least to HR and a worker's line manager—is the answer (and many companies have so-called "love contracts" that require workers to do just that).
If you enter into a romantic relationship in the workplace, experts urge you to think about your motives, and weigh the pros and cons. Crucially, if you are involved in a relationship with a superior or subordinate, experts urge you to immediately disclose this to HR, and request that a supervisor be reassigned.
But if you're dating a co-worker at a similar level, which Baker says most people consider less risky or problematic than dating someone at a different job level, it's up to you to tell anyone other than HR. You just have to know that the rest of the staff "will figure it out," says Taylor.
The longer a person waits to reveal their romantic relationship, Baker notes, the more others "start to feel like something was being hidden from them" and "react negatively". They may review their past interactions with you and your colleague, re-examine any comments each person made, suddenly suspect why the two of you are going on a business trip, or if you're exchanging other resources and information that the rest of the team doesn't get.
Despite these rules and potentially perilous situations, workplace romances will not go away. With all the psychological factors involved, it is hard to blame the colleagues for falling in love with each other. However, it is important that workers understand the implications of this.
