Romantic Relationship in the Workplace and Its Impact on the Employee: A Case Study on Sykes Asia

Abstract

Times have changed. The economy is now becoming globalized and the technology creates a staggering impact on the ways of living especially in urban settings. Even the nature of work has changed People are spending more and more time in the workplace. The usual 8am to 5pm working days are gone What we have now are 8pm to 5am shifts These kinds of shifts apply especially to call centers like the researcher's chosen company for case study, Sykes Asia. Goldhaber (1979) defines an organization as a "net work of interdependent relationships." The pattern and nature of relationships in an organization may be determined by the positions and prescribes roles for those positions. This gives structure and stability to the organization However, individuals act outside of role structure. Another type of relationship other than positional relationship bursts forth and it is interpersonal in nature. An interpersonal relationship can be an acquaintance, friendship, or a romantic relationship. This paper focuses on romantic relationships. The need to study romance in the workplace crops up simply for the reason that the quality of a romantic relationship has a strong effect on the personal happiness and life satisfaction of an individual Human resources are depended upon by an organization to achieve its purpose. Therefore, romantic relationships of human resources may affect the organization itself. Romantic relationships affect the conduct of work of employees especially when the romance occurs within the organization. With the increasing number of women in the labor force and longer working hours, this type of relationship can not be avoided. Managers have come to realize that they can not forbid romance in the workplace any more than they can forbid competition. Since the topic is all about romance, the researcher thought it would be best to choose an organization with a young population since young professionals or "yuppies" are in the age of searching for potential marriage partners. The research is basically a descriptive case study of the situation of romance couples in the company and how their co-workers view the concept of having a romance partner in the workplace. A traveling experiment served to be the best tool to gather data. The researcher interviewed romance couples personally and exclusively to gather information on their personal experience in having a romantic relationship in the workplace. A survey was conducted, on the other hand, to gather information on how the general population of the organization perceives romance in the workplace. The study was conducted at Sykes Asia Inc. located on the 26th floor of Robinsons Summit Bldg. at Ayala Avenue. Sykes is a call center. They help companies optimize customer-facing and back office processes while containing variable costs and facilitating capital divestiture via outsourcing and program management. The results of the study show· that romantic relationships can indeed increase worker productivity. This response is especially true with the couples interviewed because most of them reponed increased zest to go to work, a way to ease their work burdens. and healthy competition with their romantic partners. Negative results towards romance in the workplace are minimal. With all the theoretical information and the actual data gathered from the organization it was shown that proximity is strong basis of human attraction and therefore has become a foundation for the formation of such romantic relationships. Romantic relationships, however, are not conducive in all types of organizations Sykes Asia is one of the organizations where romance in the workplace serves a good purpose. There are general kinds of interventions that organizations make in response to specific organizational romance no action at all, punitive action (e.g. reprimand, warning. transfer, termination) and positive action ( e.g. open discussion, counseling). The most frequent response was no action. The researcher recommends that the management generally should not intervene with the workplace romance since this will only cause lov.1 working motivation or in worst cases, resignation of the employee from the company. The management can only offer counseling, seminars, or open discussion but this should not be pressed on to the employees. Punitive action is not advised unless sexual harassment occurs.