When to Tell Your Boss About a Workplace Relationship

There can be fantastic highs and dramatic lows in any relationship, but when you start one in the workplace, it can be a tricky situation to navigate – one that requires a lot of admin, but also a lot of potential stress. The question is, does the relationship need to be disclosed to your colleagues, and what about your boss?

Image: Batik

When fleeting glances and office banter turns into something more serious, is it anybody else's business, including your manager’s?

That’s the topic of conversation in China News Asia (CNA) podcast Work It episode ‘Stolen Glances and Intimate Lunches’.

Daniel Lim is head of sales at Grvty Media, and shares his experience of what it looks like when work and home life intersect, and you start a relationship with one of your colleagues.

“[At work] I had to reassign a project to someone else, and [my partner] completely disagreed with how I did it. It was quite urgent, and I didn’t have time to talk to all parties,” says Lim. 

Both he and his partner were at the same company, and Lim says it caused a rift between them that lasted a couple of days.

When work crosses over with home life it can be impossible to avoid tension. Image: Mikhail Nilov

Host Adrian Tan chimes in and says it is much easier to avoid all of these potential pitfalls by at least being in different divisions at a workplace. But for some, that isn’t possible. 

So is it important to establish a set of ground rules for yourselves in the workplace environment?

Lim says he and his partner had to do just that. It meant when they arrived at the office they were in a different mode. As soon as it was time to go home and clock off, things were back to normal. But being hyper-aware of the rules, also included not talking about work once they got home. 

Anyone in a relationship will know that connecting with your partner at the end of the day can invariably involve talking about work. It’s a way of gauging where the other person is at, and also, to be there for your partner offload if they need to. 

Are you better off keeping your relationship to yourselves? Image: Batik

“Sometimes you find it difficult to want to spend time with each other,” Lim says in the podcast.

Host, Crispina Robert suggests one way to eventually solve the issue is for the woman in the partnership to leave the company and work somewhere else.

Fortunately Lim says he doesn’t feel this is consistent for women to be the only ones to make that decision. In his case, his partner did eventually leave the company, which gave both of them freedom to pursue their careers in slightly different ways.

Lim says he now enjoys hearing about his partner’s job: “I’m genuinely curious,” he says.

But back to those early days in a workplace relationship.

Is there any need to disclose it to your boss, and why should they care to know what you do in your private life? After all, work is based on people dynamics, and at any given time, people may, or may not, get along.

Lim says relationships in the workplace should only become an issue for a company if it causing a distraction, turns toxic, or starts affecting productivity. 

“I think it becomes a bit too worrying if companies are involved in personal issues. There are a lot of considerations, and I would personally think it was a little heavy handed [for them to do so].”  

Anyone who has kept a relationship in the dark will know that it requires a lot of admin. Any form of PDA is off limits, so too, is being seen together too often. 

So where do you draw the line to ensure that you don’t cause any harm to the other person by keeping things on the down low, while also being respectful to those around you?  

From a management or leadership point of view, Lim says while he doesn’t believe companies need to implement policies around relationships in the workplace, he feels it can be useful for couples to be open and transparent about their relationship, because it allows a company to prepare to recruit or look at other options “if things go south.” 

Listen to the podcast episode above to hear more.