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There’s no doubt that texting a coworker a winking emoji is less appealing than exchanging a coy glance at the coffee machine.
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Those fleeting interactions that once sparked office romances have become impossible during the pandemic, when many have gone home to work.
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Despite this, workers have found ways to continue flirting with their colleagues, a fact that suggests the inevitability of office or workplace romance.
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February 2022 data from the American Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) suggests that workplace romance may have increased even while working from home.
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A third of the 550 respondents said they had formed or maintained a relationship with a colleague during the pandemic, an increase of 6% since the days before the global health crisis.
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The workplace is a breeding ground for love and fleeting love. Yet many companies frown on coworker pairing and view it as an HR nightmare.
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Experts say there are specific reasons why workers simply can’t stop engaging with their co-workers, even when isolated during a global health crisis.
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Something as old as time
Although the subject is considered taboo, 75% of respondents to the SHRM survey said they were OK with their co-workers dating. After all, half of them said they liked a colleague at some point.
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And while fraternization is a headache for many companies, the romance between colleagues has existed for decades, even centuries.
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Loves in the office can still flourish outside this space, certain psychological prejudices can still push us towards colleagues…
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“Even going back to the industrial age, there was already discussion about the attraction of people to the workplace,” explains Amy Nicole Baker, a professor at the University of New Haven, in the United States, who studies these phenomena and organizational psychology.
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As early as the 1800s, romantic interactions took place in early administrative work, with women and men in offices engaging in “unnamed behavior”, according to critics of the time.
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But many couples meet at work, and it doesn’t necessarily end in scandal (on the contrary, it can end in a fairy tale, like the Obamas, who met at a Chicago law firm when they were in their twenties).
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Data from 2017 shows that one in 10 heterosexual couples in the United States say they have met at work.
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There is some data showing that people between the ages of 20 and 50 spend almost four times as much time with co-workers as they do with friends, so it seems to happen naturally.
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“It’s no surprise that so many people notice people at work” because work “takes up more and more of our time” over the years, said Vanessa Bohns, a professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University ( United States), which studies the dynamics of love affairs between colleagues.
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While the most common methods of finding a partner fluctuate (more people meet over the internet, for example, and fewer people meet through family friends), those who find love at work are “a constant” in the statistics, according to Ms. Baker.
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Michelle and Barack Obama met at a law firm in Chicago.
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This constant continued until the pandemic, a time when interacting with co-workers can actually seem less risky because you’re not under the watchful eye of your boss or teammates.
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Some colleagues are even secretly working at one or the other while they adjust to working remotely.
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“As long as people are interacting in a shared work environment, you’ll see the basic mechanics of human attraction happening,” Baker says. Whether the environment is physical or virtual.
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And the psychology behind these mechanisms inevitably draws colleagues to something else, even during a pandemic.
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Intimacy and familiarity
According to Amie Gordon, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan (USA), who studies the psychology of relationships, the workplace is a privileged place for the development of two key factors of attraction.
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Spending that much time with someone “could quite possibly pave the way for romance, because of all the factors that we know contribute to lust: intimacy and familiarity,” she says.
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First, the more we see something (or someone), the more likely we are to like it. This trait of familiarity is a psychological bias called the mere exposure effect: “Just seeing someone repeatedly” can generate attraction, Gordon says.
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Research has shown that being near someone for a long time can help stimulate a preference for them; the more we see a person physically and the more interactions we have with them, the faster interpersonal attraction develops.
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This bias could even apply to bosses who favor employees who spend more time with them.
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Both psychologists and human resource experts agree that co-worker romance is inevitable and needs to be managed smartly rather than forbidden or taboo.
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But this prejudice is not limited to physical proximity.
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“It’s also about emotional closeness and intellectual closeness,” Ms. Baker says. Whether it’s email or Zoom, “they’re always interacting with each other,” she says.
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This constant exposure and interaction breeds preferences regardless of physical location, which may explain why office romance has survived the era of remote work.
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Another factor that transcends the physical office is people’s preference for people who look like them, which could extend to work, given that co-workers have chosen the same career and company.
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“If you’re both lawyers, or if you both have the same background, or think about the world in the same way, that similarity will also foster sympathy and understanding,” Ms Baker says.
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It’s inevitable, now what?
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While office romance is virtually inevitable and widely accepted, it’s still complicated.
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First, it can increase the risk of sexual harassment, hostile work environments, and create conflicts of interest.
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More commonly, an office romance can also make the rest of the team uncomfortable and impact performance.
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“As soon as a team member has a relationship, and they’re no longer just a colleague, it changes the norm in an uncomfortable way,” Bohns notes. “You don’t know what’s appropriate anymore.”
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However, since office love is not going away, some experts believe that smart companies will allow their employees to date, while ensuring that professional boundaries are not crossed.
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“The best approach is to deal with the problem, rather than pretending it doesn’t exist or shouldn’t exist,” said Johnny C. Taylor Jr, SHRM’s chief executive.
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If you’re sparking an office romance, experts urge you to think about your motivations and weigh the pros and cons.
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If you have a relationship with a boss or subordinate, they strongly recommend that you let Human Resources know immediately and request a reassignment from the supervisor.
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But if you’re dating a partner, a situation that most people consider less risky or problematic than dating someone with a different level of power, it’s up to you to tell someone else. than the human resources department, according to Ms. Baker.
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You need to know that the rest of the team “will figure it out,” Taylor says.
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Ms. Baker believes that this approach should be adopted as soon as possible; the longer a person waits to reveal a relationship, the more others will “feel like they’re hiding something” and “react negatively.”
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Despite these rules and potentially precarious situations, office romances will continue to exist, and with all the psychological factors at play, it’s hard to blame co-workers for falling in love with each other.
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However, it is important that employees are aware of the implications, no matter how relaxed the team is or how trivial the consequences.
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After all, not all office romances end in a “happy ever after,” and it’s no fun seeing your ex’s face on your daily Zoom call.
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