Dealing With an Office Romance

Homebusiness Millionaires - Laura Dahl
Get rid of acne! Participate now for a year supply of skin products.

Love and marriage may "go together like a horse and carriage," but the question for entrepreneurs is, “Do they go together in today’s business environment?”

Work, after all, is the place where many people spend more than a third of their lives, and it's possibly one of the best places where employees can find a potential mate who shares similar life goals and attitudes.

But as romantic as that sounds for someone who's looking for love, dating in the workplace poses many problems for business owners. That’s why many businesses have rules against office romances; some even have rules against hiring married couples.

Before you find yourself facing this potentially sticky situation, let’s take a look at some of the factors that come into play when potential couples begin to mix their personal lives and professional responsibilities on the job.

Let's Give 'Em Something to Think About
"Why the concern? We’re both adults,” your canoodling employees might say. But adults don’t always act like adults, especially when they're in love--or when the person they're dating falls out of love with them.

Consider these risky situations. What would happen if the couple has an argument? Would they be able to keep their personal lives separate and away from the workplace? Or would they act out their feud on the job? And would other employees be pulled into their disagreement, forcing co-workers to take sides? Would it detract from their own and/or other people’s workplace productivity?

And what about the issue of favoritism? For instance, if one person in the relationship supervises the other, will he or she be able to be fair and objective when delegating responsibilities or distributing work projects?

The questions get even more complex when you take into account the organizational chart. Would the supervisee have the same power or influence over his or her boss as any other employee would have? Would the supervisor be able to evaluate the supervisee in a fair and equitable manner, or would the supervisee be given a more positive and lenient treatment? Would decisions be made that are motivated by the personal relationship vs. the merit of the idea or the individual(s) involved? Would the lower-level employee in the relationship be given special consideration by their partner when it came to handling tasks, responding to situations or fulfilling the job requirements?

Other perils abound: Due to the closeness of the relationship, either of the employees could inappropriately or accidentally divulge information to his or her partner. This could easily occur in the course of sharing events of the day with one another. Just how sensitive is the information being passed on?

An equally challenging question to ask is this: Do other employees believe that because of the special relationship and special allegiance the pair of employees has to one another, that these other employees can't discuss or complain about the other individual? If that's the case, then issues that might normally be discussed and brought out in the open might possibly remain unspoken and unaddressed. And when employees feel that communication is blocked, for whatever reason, morale can suffer. Worse yet, what if they thought the situation was bad enough that they were forced to do something drastic, like file a discrimination suit?

There are other dilemmas, too, for the business owner. What happens if and when the couple breaks up? Will other employees feel the effects of the “divorce”? Again, will they be asked or expected to take sides? Will they feel any of the hostility that may be directed at the other person in the former relationship? Will there be a negative tension in the workplace environment?

You also need to consider another possible and quite serious result of a breakup, especially if there's a difference in rank between the two individuals involved. What if one party claims sexual harassment and considers a lawsuit? In this instance, one party can claim to have suffered undue pressure to remain in the relationship lest their job performance be negatively evaluated.

Taking the Right Steps
Obviously, the best way to avoid the negative repercussions of a romance gone sour is to forbid your employees from dating and never hire married couples. Realistically, that could prove extremely difficult and even more challenging to enforce in today’s world, although these are options that some companies have taken in an attempt to avoid this type of situation.

It's extremely critical, especially as your company grows, to get ahead of the curve. The best thing to do would be to work closely with your HR person or an HR consultant to anticipate problems and then set up remedies. For instance, you might provide sensitivity training for both men and women about what constitutes sexual harassment. Or you might establish a policy that supervisors aren't allowed to date their direct reports.

Your goal is to provide a professional atmosphere where your company goals can be achieved. Ideally, the working environment should be pleasant enough that your staff can enjoy themselves while being as productive as possible.

Just remember, interpersonal relationships between your employees will inevitably develop. And while the outcomes of those relationships could be far more complex than you may have imagined, being aware of the potential drawbacks and what types of relationships are developing will go a long way to keeping the environment as "hazard free" as possible.

David G. Javitch, Ph.D., is Entrepreneur.com's "Employee Management" columnist and an organizational psychologist and president of Javitch Associates, an organizational consulting firm in Newton, Massachusetts. With more than 20 years of experience working with executives in various industries, he's an internationally recognized author, keynote speaker and consultant on key management and leadership issues.

Atkins Diet's Recipes
AdSense Tracking Tools

Internet Marketing - 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Site

The 10 Commandments of a Great Business Name
Good Diet's Tips

Internet marketing involves more than getting traffic to your site. Sometimes the smallest things can have the biggest impact. The following five actions you can take to improve your Internet marketing and Web site are simple and often over looked when creating or marketing a site.

1) Create a unique 404 error page.

What is a 404 error page? It's the page you see when someone clicks on a broken link or a page that has been renamed. When that happens the site visitor will see a standard page that simply tells you the page is no longer available. It has no thrills, no other links, no branding and above all, very little helpful information.

The page usually starts off with these words:

The page cannot be found.
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

Your unique 404 error page should look like a regular page of your site. It should include your site's header, footer and navigation bar so that the site visitor can easily click on another area of your site. The content of this unique 404 error page should contain text explaining that the page selected is no longer available along with contact information so the site visitor has the option of emailing or calling your company.

An example of our 404 error page can be found at: http://www.eplusm.com/404.html.

2) We value your privacy.

This simple four word sentence can have a tremendous effect on your email or form conversion ratios. Be sure to have the sentence, or at least the word "privacy" linked to your privacy statement.

Use this sentence next to any email form on your site or on your contact page. Clearly and simply stating your privacy policy assures the site visitor that you will not sell, give or trade their email or personal information to a third party.

While a privacy page is standard practice for most professional site builders, lawyers usually have their hand in writing a company's privacy policy. That results in having the privacy policy looking like a long legal document.

Using the simple sentence with a link to the privacy policy gives the site visitor assurance that you care about their privacy without having a long explanation.

3) We vs You.

Re-read your home page copy and make sure it is customer focused text. Customer focused text is text that focuses on the customer and not YOU. When you re-read your home page content see how often you use the term "we, us, or our" rather than "You". If your text reads something like: "We offer bla, bla, bla," or "Our services includes, bla, bla, bla," then it is focusing on you rather than the customer.

4) Email Signatures.

Create standard email signatures for ALL your employees. Anyone that uses the Internet in your company should have a company standard email signature.

What's an email signature? Did you ever notice that at the end of some emails you will see not only the email creator's name, but their phone number, fax, number, company name, logo, Web site address, etc. It's amazing how easy this is to do and how many companies simply over look it. Or they let everyone do their own thing.

Having the company's contact and Web site information makes it easy for the recipient to contact you or visit your site. Making it standard email signature improves your overall branding strategy.

5) Call to Action.

A call to action is a statement that asks the site visitor to do something. Two of the biggest mistakes made on a Website is not using call to actions or using the wrong call to actions.

You have probably been on sites that do not give you a clue as to what to do next. They have text and links but nothing that tells you to learn more, buy, compare, read, or call now. Look over your site and see what call to actions are on your site. Try to view it as a first time visitor and create a scenario or action you want your site visitor to take.

The most common and most boring call to action is "Click Here". Sometimes it's unavoidable or it's the only phrase that makes sense, but consider using other statements. Instead of "Click here" use words like learn, save, read, compare, etc.

Call to actions are usually linked to another page on your site. This is a great opportunity to use a keyword in a link on your site, which helps with search engine optimization. Use the keyword in the link for your call to action.

These five suggestion are basically simple things to do that can help improve your site overall. They are often over looked but can prove to have a tremendous effect on your site.

For one of our client's Web sites we suggested item number 2, adding "We value your privacy" just above their email form. The sentence was linked to their privacy policy. The link was hardly used, but having that simple statement was all that was needed. The added statement increased their form's conversion ratio by over 250%.

---

About the Author: Patricia Hughes is founder of ePlus Marketing and has over 11 years experience in Internet marketing and over 20 years experience in marketing. To receive the ePlus Marketing monthly newsletters and BLOG - both packed with additional Internet marketing tips and suggestions - visit our site as http://www.eplusm.com.

How To Run A Business From A Yacht
Viral Marketing For Business Success
5 Things you should NEVER Tell a Customer