Gen-Zers and Millennials Want Workplace Romance Normalized—Even If It Breaks Company Rules |
Gen Z and Millennials Want Workplace Romance Normalized—Even If It Breaks Company Rules
Employees say the workplace is their best chance of meeting their future spouse without dating apps.
BY BRUCE CRUMLEY @BRUCEC_INC
The enormous public attention—and considerable condemnation—uncorked last year by the workplace tryst revealed in the infamous Coldplay “kiss cam” seemed to justify the ban that many companies place on coworkers getting romantic. But new survey data doesn’t just show most employees disapprove of businesses keeping their would-be Romeos and Juliets apart. Incredibly, 43 percent of the people who said they’d ignored the prohibition wound up marrying the colleague they’d dated.
Data indicates just over a third of companies have formal rules against coworkers pitching woo, and another 42 percent require smitten staffers to disclose their relationship to managers. But a large number of employees want their bosses to permanently break up with those rules. For example, nearly 44 percent of Gen Z and millennials think company bans on dating should themselves be outlawed. About 53 percent of both those cohorts told a survey they believe office romances “should be normalized, since work is now one of the last places where meeting someone ‘organically’ feels possible.” And by “organically,” they mean finding soulmates in pursuit of normal daily life, rather than having to find them in contrived, often online hunts.Those were among the findings in a survey of 2,000 Hily dating app users released on March 30. Not only did those largely younger workers think company prohibitions of workers transforming professional relationships into very personal ones were just wrong, but fully one-third of both Gen Z and millennial respondents said they’d “quit their job to be with someone they fell for at work.”
So much for business owners and HR managers channeling the Capulet-Montague workplace vibe.
Surprisingly, younger respondents of Hily’s survey looked downright submissive to workplace dating bans compared to a recent Forbes Advisor study covering all age groups. Its poll of 2,000 employees found a firm majority of participants—60 percent—reported having had an office romance despite employer discouragements. In 43 percent of workplace lovey-dovey cases, the rule-breaking colleagues involved wound up getting married.
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Around 35 percent of poll participants who had dated coworkers said they didn’t bother revealing those relationships to their employer. Another 50 percent said the anti-Cupid policies didn’t prevent them from flirting with workplace colleagues.
“Workplace romances are more common than many might initially believe,” the Forbes Advisory’s report on the findings said. “Employers should proactively set forth policies that foster a positive working environment for all parties involved by detailing how to approach and manage workplace romances, including processes and systems for handling such relationships.”
As the recommendation suggests, the wider analysis of those findings tended to maintain a Lady Tremaine hostility to coworker romances. Despite that, it included survey responses offering convincing reasons for why they happen—and how they even make sense.