CHICAGO, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- More than one-third of U.S. employers have no formal policy managing romance between co-workers, an informal outplacement agency survey said Wednesday.
The Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. pre-Valentine's Day e-mail survey of 1,000 human resource executives drew about 100 responses. Thirty-five percent said employers had no policy.
Forty-five percent said their companies had policies against supervisor-subordinate relations, 14 percent said there was no policy but intra-office romance was discouraged, and 3 percent simply took a "don't ask, don't tell" approach.
"Most companies would benefit by spelling out the rules of workplace romance," Challenger Chief Executive John Challenger said.
A recent survey by the online career site Vault.com found nearly 60 percent of workers had been involved in an office romance, up from 46 percent three years ago. Thirty-eight percent said they knew of an office romance being conducted.
