US office romances hit by the recession!

In the US, a recent issue of Bloomberg Businessweek reports that that the prolonged recession has taken a toll not just on employment but the office romance. In February, 75% of US workers surveyed by job-search website Monster.com stated that a workplace relationship could cause conflict. And 62% added that office romances were a distraction from job performance. Career.builder.com's annual Valentine Day romance poll showed a decline in reported office trysts. While 50% of respondents claimed to have been involved in a workplace relationship in 2006, that proportion dropped to 37% in early 2010. All of which has upset those who believe that love is what makes the world go round, not just on college campuses but in office cubicles. Stephanie Losee, co-author of Office Mate, says, "That's when you're excited to come in and work and you care about your company." Which is another way of saying that people in love with a colleague might not just come in early, go home late and take less leave but go all out to impress the loved one with their work! Pixar, Southwest Airlines and National Public Radio even encourage in-house match-making.

All that is now being threatened. The party-pooper, or what we in India call the kabab mein haddi, is not sexual harassment suits but third-party retaliation cases filed by employees afraid of losing their jobs in a sluggish economy and who maintain that they were treated unfairly because of the manager's obsession with another colleague or failed romance! Retaliation suits in the USA grew by 23% in 2008, twice the rate of all other claims. The USA's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission notes that the annual pay-out in sexual-harassment lawsuits averaged only $47.8 million over the last 12 years but that, thanks to a spurt in third-party discrimination claims, $376 million was recovered in 2009. Perhaps Indian tech firms and Nasscom could cite these statistics while lobbying for outsourcing on Capitol Hill!