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Business English: Labours of love as Indians find romance at work
Outsourcing staff are meeting their future spouses in the officeOffice romance can be frowned on in the west but employees at India's outsourcing companies are more likely to regard the workplace as a good testing-ground for a long-term relationship. "Office hours sometimes get very hectic," says 25-year-old D. Karthik as he waits with his colleague and fiancée, K. Tejaswania, at the juice bar of their employer, Mphasis. "If we are still able to adjust to it with our partners, that shows we are best for each other."
In a country in which young people used to outsource the business of finding a spouse to their parents, workers in India's growing outsourcing sector often look for partners themselves among their nearest colleagues. Far from discouraging such relationships, their employers are happy to play matchmaker, according to a new study by the Indian School of Business, the country's prestigious MBA college in Hyderabad.
One of India's most important industries with export revenue of more than $40bn a year, the outsourcing sector has been at the forefront of economic, social and cultural change since its emergence in the 1990s.
The ISB cites a survey by Monsterindia.com, part of the global recruitment site Monster Worldwide, that found nearly 58 per cent of 12,191 respondents admitted to either having indulged in, or being open to, office romance. "There is a perception that a lot of companies are encouraging this trend because this accrues benefits to the organisation," the ISB study by students Anshumita Sen and Naina Bhattacharya says.
These perceived benefits include "reduced attrition, higher employee engagement, satisfied and happy employees, greater feelings of citizenship towards the organisation and greater productivity through longer working hours at the workplace".
Welcoming wives
Some companies have gone as far as welcoming spouses under "referral programmes" in which staff can recommend friends to their human resources departments for recruitment, the study finds. The outsourcing industry says it does not "encourage or discourage" office romances but tolerates them when they develop.
Francisco D'Souza, chief executive officer at US-listed Cognizant Technology Solutions, says the company draws the line only when relationships occur between people in a direct "reporting line". "We have plenty of husbands and wives working for us and that's good."
Office romances are to be expected in such a youthful industry. "If you work with a workforce so young - 80 per cent of our population is under 25 - that's something that's in the air," says Pratik Kumar, executive vice-president of human resources at Wipro, India's third biggest software outsourcing company.
Many employees in the industry hail from small, conservative communities in India's vast hinterlands and feel liberated when they come to big cities such as Bangalore or Mumbai.
Wipro even has an internal matrimonial site where would-be suitors can seek partners among the workforce of 96,965. Wipro's gender balance roughly matches the sector average of 65 per cent male.
One risk from such openness, of course, is emotional drama between employees. Mr Kumar says Wipro has an "ombudsman's process" for sorting out staff disputes that sometimes has to resolve romantic tussles. "Do we get issues? Yes, we do. Sometimes these issues can appear very silly," he says.
Potential Problems
The ISB study also cautions that Indian companies need to be mindful of potential problems such as sexual harassment - one issue that has given inter-office romance a bad name in the west.
Indian legal guidelines on harassment require companies to maintain a "complaint cell" for women to report abuses. But the ISB finds that nearly a third of employees surveyed thought their company did not have such a cell or had not heard of one.
Such dangers aside, Indian parents probably do not need to be alarmed. When it comes to tying the knot, it seems traditional concerns such as caste quickly return to the fore. Ms Tejaswani says: "I used to bore my mother talking about him [Mr Karthik]. So when the time came, it wasn't difficult at all convincing them. And since caste also was not an issue, his parents, too, agreed."
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The Financial Times, 23.06.2009
© 2009 The Financial Times,
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