Joanna Schroeder thinks corporate “love contracts” may help protect against harassment and false accusations.
As my husband says, “You shouldn’t fish off the company pier.”
We all know that inter-office romance is a bad idea: hurt feelings, uncomfortable requests for toner in the supply room, evil glances over the cubicle partitions from the dumpee’s friends in the general direction of the dumper…
But Courtney Subramanian’s Time.com piece, Office Romance: Would You Sign a Contract To Date A Colleague? leads to something more serious, citing a growing trend in companies to lift a ban on office romances, and instead require would-be lovers to sign contracts as to the consensual nature of the relationship.
Signing a contract seems so forced, so cold, so… un-romantic, doesn’t it? Well, here’s what’s even less romantic:
According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 11,364 charges were filed alleging sexual harassment in the workplace last year.
And those are the numbers for reported incidences. How many people quit their jobs because a romance went awry and their former lover used more subtle, perhaps less obviously illegal tactics to pressure their ex to bail on a job?
And how many of those sexual harassment suits were bogus? There’s no way for anyone to know, but it seems to me that when we’re talking about people’s livelihoods, whether you’re the alleged harasser or the harass-ee (especially in an economy like ours), a contract is a pretty good idea.
I know, it doesn’t feel like a free country when people are required to sign contracts about sex and love, but a corporation is a volunteer organization, not a governing body, so they can require all sorts of contracts, such as non-competition and non-disclosure agreements. Some companies even require signatures on contracts of morality, so this is nothing new.
While ultimately I agree with the expert quoted in the Time.com interview when she says that education and information about how to stop sexual harassment are probably the most important steps toward preventing harassment, a contract can be an opportunity to, at the very least, help outline proper behavior and teach people how sexual harassment happens and what it looks like.
Ultimately, these so-called “love contracts” are mostly just a CYA for the company to protect its assets. But if signing a contract encourages employees to think twice before revealing assets of their own, it’s probably not such a bad thing.
Or is there a better way?
For more on “Love Contracts” read Jamie Reidy’s Contractually Bound – But Not In A Kinky Way.
Photo Courtesy of Victor1
“According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 11,364 charges were filed alleging sexual harassment in the workplace last year.” Key word “alleged” Anita Hill? Really? But that goes to show that there is nothing out there to help men deal with harassment at work. It does happen you know? I don’t see men responding to this as women are quick to the keyboard. In the 70’s I was harassed and didn’t realize it until years later. Setting … My boss (female) and I had meetings with UAW in Detroit. She flew in before me and when I checked into… Read more »
Actually anyone here watch Brothers and Sisters? There’s an episode where one of the characters has a one-off fling with an employee and there’s a bit about them writing up a contract while in the heat of the moment. It’s a bit silly, but then it’s supposed to be silly. Anyway…I saw it and I thought, hey yeah that’s a good idea. We live in a world where employers do take advantage of their employees….and in a world where jilted lovers can try to file sexual harassment suits in order to screw over their former partners. Signing some sort of… Read more »
I’m curious how the company love contract would handle an employee dating more than one employee at the same company. Would an employee be compelled to publicly declare his intention to date multiple people? Would each of those people have to approve the same contract for it to be valid? Or would it be multiple bilateral contracts for each relationship? Also, I wonder how the human resources office or the supervisor would handle a love contract for a married employee who is dating someone other than his/her spouse – what is the employer’s duty in that case, to help the… Read more »
Yeah…but right now with nothing like a contract in place, it gets wicked messy anyway. At least this would sort some of it out.
Of course, there would need to be escape clauses in the highly likely event that the two people will stop dating but continue to work together. There would have to some way to officially end the contract and let the company know about it so everyone knows it’s over. Of course, there would also need to be a re-activation clause as well, for when you want to get back together occasionally for booty calls. I like the idea in a lot of ways, though I’m a little reluctant to let my employer have too much control over my romantic relationships.… Read more »
As much as I hate agreeing with you, this is a wonderful idea.
Of course, MRAs have been talking about this kind of safety instrument for a long time. Ideally, people have no interaction with the opposite gender at all. Absent this, a contract and strong video evidence is the best defence.
“Ideally, people have no interaction with the opposite gender at all.”
Well I think there’s all sorts of problems with that. But the easiest one to mention is that not all people have relationships with the opposite gender. So what, would I only work with gay men, because I’m a lesbian? But then what the heck would bisexual people do?
So yeah, I’m all for these contracts. It makes things a lot easier to figure out if the relationship goes belly up.
It’s a CYA for the company, not for the people in the company….that being said, I’m not sure what else to do in a world where people can act so terribly to each other. Harassment is real, false accusations should be taken seriously, and people are gonna want to date the people they are around 60 hours a week.
Weird times.
I think to protect the person who is in a lower power status is the goal….I was very young when I was approached by my mentor…he had that terrible power over me…he used a mixture of manipulation, coercion, and threats to keep me from telling…Many people do not tell their stories because they are afraid… I went to the Anita Hill conference a few months ago…and it is so degrading to hear her testimony again and the ignorance and arrogance of the congressmen….but heartening to feel the camaraderie of an auditorium full of people who had endured similar stories…. I… Read more »
Leia, I’m sorry that happened to you. Ugh. I had a similar experience when I was young, and when the job didn’t really matter.
Glad you found the Anita Hill conference to be reassuring, at least in part.
When that case happened, I was in sixth or seventh grade, and I remember wearing a pin that said, “I believe Anita Hill”… It must’ve been quite controversial in our little town to have such a small person making such a statement. I guess I’m not much different now 😉