Stop using your productive time for office romance - HR Practitioner

• Organisations advised not to allow office romance

• Human Resource practitioner says office romance affects productivity

• Office romance can only work when partners do not report to each other, HR practitioner

A Human Resource practitioner, Francisca Ashong, has urged persons involved in relationships with their colleagues not to let that affect their work at the office.

According to her, one of the reasons office romance is not allowed in some organizations is because it affects productivity.

Some persons involved in office romance, she said, use productive hours to engage in chats with their partners, which goes against the company.

Speaking on GhanaWeb’s Moans and Cuddles, she said “once people are in a relationship and are in the same branch and location what is going to happen is that the tendency of the man or the woman trying to be naughty at work is great… So probably during a working period a man would intentionally send a message to a girlfriend who might be in a different cubicle or department and they may end up using productive time maybe in the washroom somewhere.”

She added that “So for this reason some organizations don’t allow this and you know there are some men they want to have you and you say no. They get angry and at that material moment anger (assuming the person is going to work with figures) you can imagine how confused the person is going to be and the impact it’s going to have in the organization.

She said even though some organizations allow it so long as the person does not report to the partner an organization must ban or avoid office romance so long as the disadvantages outweighs its benefit.

"... ones the disadvantages will have more impact on the organizational productivity then you have to be careful and look at it." She concluded