Love has no desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving. ~Kahlil Gibran
Office Romance Does Little Damage to Russia’s Business Scene
A recent survey by the SuperJob.ru recruiting portal suggests a heightened consciousness on the part of Russian managers to clamp down on workplace relationships. Fifty-five percent of employers polled believe that workplace romance ruins performance and productivity. Forty-three percent of Russians share this view, saying that goings-on in office cubicles increase the possibility of favoritism, according to the nationwide survey, which polled 700 companies and 2,500 economically active Russians aged 18 and above. In addition, one in every five respondents believes that consensual flings that turn sour can compromise a company and ruin teamwork, especially if the lovers quarrel or decide to call it quits.
But can more rules discourage potential paramours from taking advantage of a professional environment for personal satisfaction?
Experts are unanimous in cautioning that love affairs at work cannot be avoided, if only because young healthy people spend a third of their lifetime at work. That’s also where the eligible opposite sex resides, they say. “In an era when leaner organizations and new ways of working add up to longer hours for many people, work may be the natural place to meet a potential mate,” Anne Fisher wrote in the Fortune magazine. Naturally, as women move into middle and upper management, they and their male coworkers are more likely than ever to interact as peers.
“The office is the sexiest of places,” Alexander Poleyev, a professor at Moscow State University Institute of Psychoanalysis, said. “The workplace makes people feel and look better. There’s a term for it—it’s called ‘the workplace crunch.’ This is when the workplace environment makes a person stay in shape in every sense of the word. Many Russian men, for instance, are careless about their hygiene on weekends but they always appear smartly dressed on weekdays.”
The workplace, Poleyev believes, brings out the best qualities in both men and women. “In the workplace our professional knowledge transcends our general intelligence, which is why men appear much more intelligent, erudite, than in real life,” Poleyev said. “If for instance, a man demonstrates business acumen at work, which he has no chance of displaying in a real life situation, he may captivate female colleagues and invite a particular sympathy on their part.”
The close attention paid to workplace romance lately is a by-product of the growth in the numbers of women in the workforce, said Professor Colin Boyd in a recent article in the Journal of Business Ethics. Indeed, one way life changed for many Russian women after World War II was in the workplace. More Soviet women went to work in factories and took over many of the jobs men used to do before the war.
Another lasting scar of war is the heavy toll it took on Russian men. Today, there are some ten million more women than men, a fact which makes competition to attract male attention in the Russian workplace particularly fierce. The depressing demographics have not only over-indulged Russian men, but also helped create an enduring chauvinistic mindset toward women, experts say. Male chauvinism apart, Russian women’s socio-economic situation leaves much to be desired. According to official statistics, the bulk of Russia’s unemployed are women. They run less than five percent of the country’s private enterprises and are always the first to be let go when economic misfortune strikes.
According to the Superjob.ru survey, 41 percent of male respondents and 36 percent of female admitted that they had at one time or another been involved in a workplace romance. About 12 percent of respondents believe that workplace romance makes workers happier and “gives the workplace a new lease on life.” Among economically active Russians, 23 percent said workplace relationships do not affect job performance or teamwork, even though only 13 percent of their employers shared such views.
The more, the better
One reason why coworkers ignore the established code of conduct in order to date the heart-stirrer at the next desk is that for many, the workplace is the natural place to meet a potential mate, said Alexey Petyukov, an associate professor at the St. Petersburg Institute of Pedagogy and Psychology. “People who work together often have similar backgrounds, talents, and aspirations,” Petyukov said.
Facts and figures on the aftermath of workplace romance in Russia are hard to come by, but without stretching the sense of universalism in an individualized world, the American experience can be revealing. A recent American Management Association survey revealed that 44 percent of workplace romances led to marriage, while another 23 percent led to a long-term relationship that either continues or has since ended. Just 33 percent of respondents reported that office dating led to short-term relationships. Jared Sandberg captures the mood in a Wall Street Journal article: “Nine-to-five nuptials spring from the huge amount of waking hours employees spend with their colleagues. The central role work plays in our lives means we often have more things in common with colleagues than with spouses: the little office hells that bond us. The latest office back-stabbings, which take our work-spouse’s breath away, bore our real spouses senseless.”
And there might be professional benefits, too. People who are in love with a colleague often begin coming to work earlier and leaving later, said James Dillard, the director of the Center for Communication Research at the University of Wisconsin. “They also embrace work with a new fervor and show an unwonted burst of enthusiasm for life in general,” he said. Dillard, who has done several studies on how office romances affect both productivity and the workers involved, concludes that “when unattached professional adults do give their amorous impulses free rein, the impact on the organization is usually slight.”
Another fascinating finding of recent research is that the risk of divorce is dramatically reduced when married couples work in the same workplace. The research, which was conducted by Yvonne Åberg, a Research Fellow in Sociology at Nuffield College, supports the hypothesis that the risk for divorce is reduced if spouses share the same social context. The Russian constitution, too, prohibits discrimination against employment of spouses and close relatives. But according to a recent report by RIA Novosti, one in every ten companies in Russia now inserts a clause in the employment contract that disallows close relatives from working in the same place. If managers in such organizations are informed about such a relationship, the report says, they usually force one of the spouses (normally the wife) to resign. Oleg Shevrin, a specialist in labor law, said the denial of employment or dismissal for this reason can be regarded as discrimination, although in Russia the privacy rights of employees typically do not prohibit employers from acting as the dating police by implementing or enforcing a policy against romantic relationships in the workplace.
Critics of workplace romance say that recent timid efforts by Russian employers to regulate office relationships are not just meant to avoid sexual harassment claims, which are few and far between in Russia. Romance among colleagues, they argue, can lead to unfair and unethical treatment, and to a poisonous atmosphere that affects many others, especially if workplace love affairs cross lines of power and authority. Office romance also has its rough patches often born of typical jealousies and sensitivities, and opponents have argued that the dating couple will drive other coworkers to gossip and be distracted, thereby negatively impacting productivity. “The workplace must always be prevented from succumbing to the evils of devious minds,” said Eugene Kobylyansky, a Russian musician and composer.
Even more telling is the fact that the workplace environment is a home breaker, and can be destructive to social fabric and social cohesion. Åberg’s research provides empirical evidence that working with people of the opposite sex increases the risk of divorce. The study, which analyzed government data on 37,000 employees across 1,500 workplaces in Sweden, concludes that working with coworkers who are all of the opposite sex increases the divorce rate by a startling 70 percent, compared with an office filled with coworkers of the same sex. There is no significant difference in effect between the sexes; that is, married men and women are about as susceptible to the influence of those of the opposite sex, Åberg writes. She also found that among coworkers, divorce is contagious: the higher the number of divorcees in the workplace, the higher the divorce rate among other employees. Another powerful divorce incentive, the study found, is having a large number of single coworkers of the same sex. The risk of divorce rises 60 percent if all coworkers of the same sex are single, rather than married—perhaps because the coworkers provide role models for the single life.
Love or be fired
The most irksome aspect of the workplace relationship is sexual harassment, which Russian sociologists claim is destroying the moral health of the nation. Writers Lopatin, Avidzba, Sinitsina and Mikhailyuk—authors of “Sexual Harassment in Russia”—say the workplace is a love trap for young women and therefore a bad place to find happiness. “Up to 100 percent of Russian women can be regarded as victims of harassment if international standards are applied,” said Irina Thomason, the president of the Foundation for the Protection of Women and Children. Other women’s rights activists say the Russian workplace should be protected by such measures as minimizing personal contacts during working hours, monitoring personal telephone calls and E-mails and even encouraging women to wear dark colored suits with a skirt of a certain length.
According to the authors the country’s nascent market economy is to blame for breeding sex predators in the workplace. Capitalism, they say, has generated a large number of private enterprises, whose leaders see themselves as tin-gods and treat their female employees as sexual objects. Particularly vulnerable are young women looking for gainful employment because the new wave of employers hardly shows respect for professionalism. “It’s enough to have a beautiful face and a good figure,” the authors conclude.
There is no doubt that capitalism brought in its wake some cataclysmic changes. In early 2000 most of the local tabloids were replete with adverts offering high-paying jobs for attractive young women between the ages of 18 and 25. The chances of getting a good position almost entirely depended on the “abilities” of the female candidate to charm and impress the prospective employer. Cases of sexual harassment have also been reported in higher educational institutions. In the 1980s, for instance, several teachers of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute were laid off for demanding that female students provide sexual services in exchange for good grades.
In a 2005 survey conducted by Focus Magazine, 32 percent of working women said they had had sexual relations with their bosses at least once. Seven percent claimed that they had been raped by their superiors, but only 30 percent of them filed complaints. About 20 percent of the victims of workplace harassment said they continued to work in the same job, while the rest said they were fired. According to the survey, one in every four women in the Russian provinces and one in three working women in Moscow and St. Petersburg have been sexually harassed at work. “Unlike in the rest of the civilized world, sexual harassment is considered a conquest, not a crime in Russia,” Denis Terentyev wrote in “Top Secret” magazine. Over the past ten years the number of reported workplace sexual harassment cases in Russia increased by 38 percent, figures from the Interior Ministry show. The ministry says it receives 300 workplace sexual harassment complaints annually, but few charges get pressed.
Of course such statistics do not always reflect the magnitude of the sexual harassment problem in Russia, as victims rarely report their ordeals to avoid social stigma. Those who summoned the courage to fight back cannot always count on justice. In 1993, a pretty young nurse from Barnaul successfully sued and won Russia’s first ever sexual harassment case against her philanderer-boss, the chief medical officer of the city’s medical center. But almost immediately after conviction, her molester was pardoned under a government amnesty that purportedly discharged “those convicted of petty misdemeanors
