Office romance has always been a given in China. To an extent it was even encouraged. When man and wife both work for the same employer, the reasoning goes, it makes family life and office work so much easier to co-ordinate and more efficient.

As a matter of fact, when a college graduate first takes a job, he or she immediately scouts the office for candidates available for dating. If the newcomer does not do it, the colleagues will do it for him or her.

But things are changing. Multinational corporations and private companies increasingly discourage office affairs. When office politics are mixed with private life, it will be detrimental to both, many employers claim.

A human resources officer at UFSoft, a Beijing-based software firm, tells of an incident when two employees started dating each other. They spent too much time together and it interfered with their job performance, even negatively affecting their co-workers, he says. So, the company has made it a policy that no immediate relative of a current employee should be hired. If employees date each other, one party has to go within one month of the marriage or their relationship being exposed.

We don't want to form a culture of nepotism, Han the HR officer explains. It would throw a wrench in the principle of fairness and equality. Imagine a superior and a subordinate are a couple, managing the team would be real difficult and team-mates would be justified to suspect preferential treatment.

The funny thing is, Wang Wenjing, the company's CEO, fell in love with and eventually married a department manager of his own firm. Mrs. Wang had to quit her job so as not to break the corporate rule. Fortunately these cases are few and far between, Han says.

Most firms do not put the ban in the company guidebook. Instead, they advise employees not to date or they would be "encouraged" to leave the job. Kingsoft, another software maker, turns a blind eye when an office romance is in the underground stage. Once it becomes public, one party would be "advised" to quit, according to Gao Ningning, assistant to the president.

But some legal experts do not see it that way. Inside dating and marriage does not violate the labour law or the marriage law, argues Zhan Zhongle, associate professor at Peking University Law School. Instead, banning it has no legal base. That's why most employers do not dare to put it down as company policy and some even deny the existence of verbal warnings.

Surprisingly, white-collar workers are not grumbling. It's not easy to get into one of these companies in the first place. Besides we have been forewarned, so there's nothing unfair about it, many acknowledge. So the laws of economics are in play here.

But State-owned enterprises (SOEs) tend to take a different approach. Chang'an Group sponsors special tours for its single employees, creating opportunities for them to get to know one another outside the office environment. It even awards each new couple 500 yuan (US$60.48) for tying the knot. "The Chinese saying 'an ju le ye" makes a lot of sense as one has to 'make a home" first and then 'take pleasure in work"" an executive with the company rationalizes.

Some companies adopt flexible policies on corporate "incestuous" relationship. They prohibit it when they see a conflict of interest or potential risk for abuse. For example, no couples are allowed to work in the accounting department.

Others take a totally laissez faire attitude. "Hey, this is not a school and we're not school administrators. What employees do with their private lives is their own business," exclaims a Chongqing Beer Group personnel manager, without realizing that college rendezvous have always been kept underground and are only now coming out of the dark.

"You can fire an employee for poor performance "if it's induced by office romance, but you cannot mete out penalty simply because of the romance," Professor Zhan remarks.

(China Daily January 10, 2004)