The Wall Street Journal
Like a growing number of young couples, Nathan Shaw and Maiko Sato met at the office, in a Cisco Systems training program for new recruits. They dated openly as fellow employees for a couple of years.
And when Mr. Shaw was looking for a novel way to propose marriage, he picked the office as the setting. He engaged his boss as a co-conspirator. During a date with Ms. Sato one evening, his boss phoned Mr. Shaw on the pretext of asking him to stop by the office to test some teleconferencing gear.
And when Mr. Shaw was looking for a novel way to propose marriage, he picked the office as the setting. He engaged his boss as a co-conspirator. During a date with Ms. Sato one evening, his boss phoned Mr. Shaw on the pretext of asking him to stop by the office to test some teleconferencing gear.
As Ms. Sato gamely tried to help with the "test," Mr. Shaw guided her to the engagement ring he had hidden, then flipped a flashing slide onto her teleconferencing screen: "Say yes!" After a moment of stunned silence, she did. The two married in 2008 and remain happily co-employed at Cisco's San Jose, Calif., campus.
Office romance is coming out of the closet. More than any other time during my 19 years of writing this column, the workplace has become a place for courtship. Some 67% of employees say they see no need to hide their office relationships, up from 54% in 2005, says a CareerBuilder survey of 5,231 employees released Tuesday.
In the past, "the Baby Boomers kept office romance secret" amid fears of career damage or reprisal, says Helaine Olen, co-author with Stephanie Losee of "Office Mate," a book on the topic. Now, amid growing openness about sexuality and greater equality between the sexes, she says, singles "are saying, 'Why is anybody even bothering to keep this secret at all?"'
That doesn't mean all the old rules have changed. Affairs when one or both partners are married are still taboo. Nor is it OK to snuggle up behind the copier with your latest crush. Employers still expect even the most out-there workplace couples to behave professionally.
Dating your boss or subordinate is generally out of bounds, too. Court rulings in recent years have broadened employers' exposure to sexual-harassment lawsuits, making this a more sensitive issue. A growing minority of employers have written policies requiring employees to disclose any romantic relationships to a superior and allowing the employer to separate the partners at work, says Manesh Rath, a Washington, D.C., employment lawyer.
Beyond that, though, employers realize that trying to stamp out office romance is like standing in front of a speeding train. "The office keeps coming up as No. 1" in surveys as the best place to meet a mate, leading bosses to conclude that they "have to be cool about it," says Janet Lever, a professor of sociology at California State University, Los Angeles, and a longtime researcher on office romance.
To Stacie Taylor, who has been dating a co-worker for 3 ½ years, finding a significant other at the office seems logical. "People spend so much of their time working that it's unavoidable," says Ms. Taylor, 37, a professional development coordinator at Zoot Enterprises, a Bozeman, Mont., technical-services provider. Her boyfriend, Cary Costello, 29, a project manager, adds, "If you're around a bunch of like-minded people who have similar interests, it's bound to happen."
But office romances can have a negative spillover effect on co-workers. At Slingshot, a Dallas interactive-advertising agency, one pair of co-workers who started dating were equals on the job and behaved appropriately in the office, says Owen Hannay, chief executive. Nevertheless, when they started going out to lunch with each other every day, co-workers on their seven-person team "felt excluded, and it created a lot of negativity." The daters have left the company, Mr. Hannay says.
Other couples take great pains to prevent fallout from their romance. Shortly after Erica Toth and Brian Carnevale started dating, colleagues in their open, 18-person office figured it out. But the couple bent over backward to keep their relationship from affecting others at the Rochester, N.Y., office of Text 100, a technology public-relations firm. They asked to be assigned to different projects, says Mr. Carnevale, 31, an account director.
Office romance is coming out of the closet. More than any other time during my 19 years of writing this column, the workplace has become a place for courtship. Some 67% of employees say they see no need to hide their office relationships, up from 54% in 2005, says a CareerBuilder survey of 5,231 employees released Tuesday.
In the past, "the Baby Boomers kept office romance secret" amid fears of career damage or reprisal, says Helaine Olen, co-author with Stephanie Losee of "Office Mate," a book on the topic. Now, amid growing openness about sexuality and greater equality between the sexes, she says, singles "are saying, 'Why is anybody even bothering to keep this secret at all?"'
That doesn't mean all the old rules have changed. Affairs when one or both partners are married are still taboo. Nor is it OK to snuggle up behind the copier with your latest crush. Employers still expect even the most out-there workplace couples to behave professionally.
Dating your boss or subordinate is generally out of bounds, too. Court rulings in recent years have broadened employers' exposure to sexual-harassment lawsuits, making this a more sensitive issue. A growing minority of employers have written policies requiring employees to disclose any romantic relationships to a superior and allowing the employer to separate the partners at work, says Manesh Rath, a Washington, D.C., employment lawyer.
Beyond that, though, employers realize that trying to stamp out office romance is like standing in front of a speeding train. "The office keeps coming up as No. 1" in surveys as the best place to meet a mate, leading bosses to conclude that they "have to be cool about it," says Janet Lever, a professor of sociology at California State University, Los Angeles, and a longtime researcher on office romance.
To Stacie Taylor, who has been dating a co-worker for 3 ½ years, finding a significant other at the office seems logical. "People spend so much of their time working that it's unavoidable," says Ms. Taylor, 37, a professional development coordinator at Zoot Enterprises, a Bozeman, Mont., technical-services provider. Her boyfriend, Cary Costello, 29, a project manager, adds, "If you're around a bunch of like-minded people who have similar interests, it's bound to happen."
But office romances can have a negative spillover effect on co-workers. At Slingshot, a Dallas interactive-advertising agency, one pair of co-workers who started dating were equals on the job and behaved appropriately in the office, says Owen Hannay, chief executive. Nevertheless, when they started going out to lunch with each other every day, co-workers on their seven-person team "felt excluded, and it created a lot of negativity." The daters have left the company, Mr. Hannay says.
Other couples take great pains to prevent fallout from their romance. Shortly after Erica Toth and Brian Carnevale started dating, colleagues in their open, 18-person office figured it out. But the couple bent over backward to keep their relationship from affecting others at the Rochester, N.Y., office of Text 100, a technology public-relations firm. They asked to be assigned to different projects, says Mr. Carnevale, 31, an account director.
When new employees joined the firm, Ms. Toth, 28, an account manager, would tell them about their dating relationship, she says, adding, "if for some reason you are concerned, let your manager know." And if she slipped up and called Mr. Carnevale "Honey" over lunch, he quickly corrected her. The couple also limit their conversation based on "what would my co-workers want to hear?" Ms. Toth (now Ms. Carnevale) says. After dating for three years as co-workers, they married and are now expecting their first child.
Some employers, especially those with a lot of young workers, are taking a more neutral stance on office romance. Cisco's dating policy, for example, "does not encourage or discourage consensual relationships in the workplace." Relationships between supervisors and subordinates, however, are "frowned upon" and may result in a transfer or reassignment, the policy says.
This leaves young couples who are peers to navigate the office fishbowl on their own. When co-workers Michelle Walters and Ryan Scholz started dating, Mr. Scholz, a production manager for GMR Marketing, New Berlin, Wis., tried at first to act in meetings as if their relationship didn't exist. But he has since relaxed and become more casual about it, and both have gotten used to kidding from co-workers, says Ms. Walters, a project manager.
GMR Chief Executive Gary Reynolds says the event-marketing company doesn't have a written dating policy because its 500 employees handle it fine without one. He says, "Why try to mandate behavior and develop policy when you don't need it?"
The biggest pitfall of office romance may be its potential for messy breakups; 67% of 493 employers surveyed in 2006 by the Society for Human Resource Management cited as a significant problem the possibility of retaliation by spurned or disappointed lovers, up from 12% in 2001.
The best vaccination against a bad ending is "a long corporate courtship," says GMR's Mr. Scholz. He adds, "Keep it light and fun at first," getting to know each other at lunch or group outings, a strategy that enabled him and Ms. Walters to learn a lot about each other before they started dating. Then if it doesn't work out, "you have basically just broken up with your lunch buddy."
Indeed, many young office daters are taking things slowly—reverting to painstaking relationship-building because they know their livelihoods are at risk. "People have this notion that these relationships are scuzzy meetings in the supply closet, or Christmas-party affairs. In fact, it's just the opposite," the author Ms. Olen says. "The office has become the last bastion of old-fashioned courting."
Jonathan Wolf met Emily Gudeman online when they were co-workers in different offices at a San Mateo, Calif., Internet-marketing concern, collaborating on a software product. They got to know each other through instant-messaging, phone calls and photos. Ms. Gudeman says Mr. Wolf gave her good advice on dealing with co-workers, and "he was really, really funny" on instant messages. After four months of remote communication, says Mr. Wolf, now a product manager for Bazaarvoice, Austin, Tex., "I had this virtual crush on this girl."
After meeting—and mindful of the risks of office romance—they took several months to get acquainted before they started dating. "We had a true courting, where we had to sit on the front porch and just talk to each other" online and by phone, says Ms. Gudeman. Eventually she transferred to his office, where the pair worked side-by-side for another year. Although both have since moved on to separate new employers, their five-year relationship is still going strong.
Some employers, especially those with a lot of young workers, are taking a more neutral stance on office romance. Cisco's dating policy, for example, "does not encourage or discourage consensual relationships in the workplace." Relationships between supervisors and subordinates, however, are "frowned upon" and may result in a transfer or reassignment, the policy says.
This leaves young couples who are peers to navigate the office fishbowl on their own. When co-workers Michelle Walters and Ryan Scholz started dating, Mr. Scholz, a production manager for GMR Marketing, New Berlin, Wis., tried at first to act in meetings as if their relationship didn't exist. But he has since relaxed and become more casual about it, and both have gotten used to kidding from co-workers, says Ms. Walters, a project manager.
GMR Chief Executive Gary Reynolds says the event-marketing company doesn't have a written dating policy because its 500 employees handle it fine without one. He says, "Why try to mandate behavior and develop policy when you don't need it?"
The biggest pitfall of office romance may be its potential for messy breakups; 67% of 493 employers surveyed in 2006 by the Society for Human Resource Management cited as a significant problem the possibility of retaliation by spurned or disappointed lovers, up from 12% in 2001.
The best vaccination against a bad ending is "a long corporate courtship," says GMR's Mr. Scholz. He adds, "Keep it light and fun at first," getting to know each other at lunch or group outings, a strategy that enabled him and Ms. Walters to learn a lot about each other before they started dating. Then if it doesn't work out, "you have basically just broken up with your lunch buddy."
Indeed, many young office daters are taking things slowly—reverting to painstaking relationship-building because they know their livelihoods are at risk. "People have this notion that these relationships are scuzzy meetings in the supply closet, or Christmas-party affairs. In fact, it's just the opposite," the author Ms. Olen says. "The office has become the last bastion of old-fashioned courting."
Jonathan Wolf met Emily Gudeman online when they were co-workers in different offices at a San Mateo, Calif., Internet-marketing concern, collaborating on a software product. They got to know each other through instant-messaging, phone calls and photos. Ms. Gudeman says Mr. Wolf gave her good advice on dealing with co-workers, and "he was really, really funny" on instant messages. After four months of remote communication, says Mr. Wolf, now a product manager for Bazaarvoice, Austin, Tex., "I had this virtual crush on this girl."
After meeting—and mindful of the risks of office romance—they took several months to get acquainted before they started dating. "We had a true courting, where we had to sit on the front porch and just talk to each other" online and by phone, says Ms. Gudeman. Eventually she transferred to his office, where the pair worked side-by-side for another year. Although both have since moved on to separate new employers, their five-year relationship is still going strong.
