In honor of Valentine’s Day, we conducted a poll to get your thoughts on the hot topic of love contracts.

What’s a Love Contract? To protect itself from liability, an employer requires romantically intertwined employees to sign an agreement stating that (1) the relationship is 100% welcome, voluntary and consensual and (2) they will fully comply with the employer’s anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies, including immediately reporting any and all harassment, avoiding nepotism/favoritism and working in a professional manner at all times.

The Vote. The people have spoken and it’s virtually a dead heat. Of the 151 voters in day one of our poll, 77 (51%) said love contracts are a good idea. 74 (49%) believe they’re a bad idea. That’s a marked difference from the same poll we conducted last year, which had a 61-39 bad/good split.

My Thoughts. My rather negative view of love contracts was captured quite nicely here in Newsweek. In short, it seems to me that love contracts are a form of over-lawyering that basically forces HR to act as the love police. Effectively and consistently enforce your anti-harassment policies and you should be just fine.

A quote from the Newsweek article gives a bit more depth:

Consensual relationship agreements are just another case of “overlawyering,” says Mark Toth, the chief legal officer for Manpower North America, an outplacement and employment services company based in Milwaukee. “It forces [employers] to become the love police, consistently enforcing who’s dating whom,” Toth says. And he’s not sure if such contracts will necessarily protect companies from litigation. A subordinate signing a love contract might claim that he or she signed under duress or that harassment began after the contract was signed.

One can easily imagine the following conversation taking place in a company that adopts a love contract policy:

HR:  Hello, Greg.

Greg:  Hello.

HR:  I heard you’re dating Marcia. Is that true?

Greg:  No, actually I’m dating Alice.

HR:  Oh, really? I thought Sam was dating Alice.

Greg:  No, he’s dating Carol now.

HR:  Hmm.  I thought Carol and Mike were married.

Greg:  Did you hear that Bobby’s dating Cindy? And that Jan’s dating Peter?

HR:  I quit. (Hands him a stack of love contracts.) Congratulations — you’re our new Head of HR.  Get everyone to sign one of these.

Don’t let that happen to you.

(In the interest of fairness, some lawyers and HR professional are quite fond of love contracts. Check out some of the comments to yesterday’s poll and read the full Newsweek article to get other perspectives.)

Valentine’s Day is next Monday. That means that there are probably lots of new workplace romances just about to burst out all over your office.

What do you do? Ever consider a love contract?

What’s a love contract? To protect itself from liability, an employer requires romantically intertwined employees to sign an agreement stating that (1) the relationship is 100% welcome, voluntary and consensual and (2) they will fully comply with the employer’s anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies, including immediately reporting any and all harassment, avoiding nepotism/favoritism and working in a professional manner at all times.

Such contracts were relatively rare and obscure until an episode on TV’s The Office in which Michael Scott was asked by his love-interest boss to sign one. Despite the rather humorous complications that followed, that episode apparently spurred HR folks all over the country to consider adding love contracts to their risk-reduction arsenal.

It seems I get lots of questions on this topic right around this time every year. This year, I thought I’d see how YOU feel.

Now that quite a few of you have voted, here’s a second article from today’s Chicago Sun-Times with my views on love contracts.  Didn’t want to unnecessarily taint the vote by airing my thoughts too early.

Enjoy!

A few weeks ago, we had some spirited discussions on office romance and whether “love contracts” are a good idea.  Today, Newsweek.com ran a story exploring those topics in detail and was kind enough to quote yours truly.  Click here for the story.

The article discusses love contracts at length and offers some expert legal opinions suggesting they’re a good idea.  When we asked our readers what they think, we got an even 50-50 split for and against.  But virtually everyone who offered a comment on the topic was dead set against ‘em.

To sum up my feelings on this issue, here’s the quote from the Newsweek article:

Consensual relationship agreements are just another case of “overlawyering,” says Mark Toth, the chief legal officer for Manpower North America, an outplacement and employment services company based in Milwaukee. “It forces [employers] to become the love police, consistently enforcing who’s dating whom,” Toth says. And he’s not sure if such contracts will necessarily protect companies from litigation. A subordinate signing a love contract might claim that he or she signed under duress or that harassment began after the contract was signed.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, we conducted a poll to get your thoughts on the hot topic of love contracts.

What’s a Love Contract?  To protect itself from liability, an employer requires romantically intertwined employees to sign an agreement stating that (1) the relationship is 100% welcome, voluntary and consensual and (2) they will fully comply with the employer’s anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies, including immediately reporting any and all harassment, avoiding nepotism/favoritism and working in a professional manner at all times.

The Vote.  Illustrating the divided opinions on this topic, the vote was a perfect 50-50 split, with half of you saying that love contracts are a good idea and half saying they ain’t.

Your Comments.  Several prominent attorneys weighed in on the subject . . .

Eric Welter called love contracts “a sign of a confused and overlawyered society.”  

Jon Hyman said:  “If the company is not going to prohibit intra-office romances per se, than anything that would be covered by a “Love Contract” should be already covered by a company’s anti-harassment policy. It seems like overkill to have employees sign off on such a document when they are already bound by the harassment policy.”

Joel Spitz added:  “While there may be some upside to love contracts, there’s also a distinct downside because, assuming that the company has in place an appropriate anti-harassment policy, all employees should already be bound by that policy.  If the company doesn’t consistently have all employees who are romantically involved sign a love contract it could undercut the effectiveness of the anti-harassment policy.”

The rather interestingly named HR Wench voiced her agreement with the above.

My Thoughts.  Echoing those comments, it seems to me that love contracts basically force the HR Department to act as the love police.  Effective and consistently enforced anti-harassment policies should already address most of the concerns. 

One can easily imagine the following conversation taking place in a company that adopts a love contract policy:

HR:  Hello, Greg.

Greg:  Hello.

HR:  I heard you’re dating Marcia.  Is that true?

Greg:  No, actually I’m dating Alice.

HR:  Oh, really?  I thought Sam was dating Alice.

Greg:  No, he’s dating Carol now.

HR:  Hmm.  I thought Carol and Mike were married.

Greg:  Did you hear that Bobby’s dating Cindy?  And that Jan’s dating Peter?

HR:  I quit.  (Hands him a stack of love contracts).  Congratulations — you’re our new Head of HR.  Get everyone to sign one of these.