When love blossoms in the office, employers are anxious to protect their interests either through love contracts or relocating staff.

But there are pitfalls, reports Lucy Hickman

Valentine's Day approaches and love is in the air.

All nice and fluffy if you like that sort of thing, but for employers it can be a minefield.

More people find romance in the workplace than anywhere else, or so countless surveys report.

This is understandable, for you spend more waking hours with work colleagues than you do with your friends and family.

And there is nothing like a bit of flirtation to help alleviate the hours of office tedium.

But such harmless fun can open an excitable can of worms, with jealousy, suspicion, company secrets and sexual tension having the potential to open a Pandora's box - as the cheesy cable television series will no doubt soon be called, 'When Relationships Go Bad'.

A recent survey by www.hrlaw.co.uk, City firm Fox Williams' on-line employment service, found that it is not the relationships themselves that employers worry about, but the consequences of them.

More than 40% of the 1,280 employers and advisers surveyed said their main concern about office romances is the improper dissemination of confidential information between employees.

Others were concerned with potential effects on productivity and problems with perceived favouritism.

To nip these concerns in the bud, 20% of UK employers have a formal or informal policy regarding intimate relationships between members of staff, with a similar number considering 'love contracts', designed to set out the procedure to follow by employer and employee if romance blossoms at work.

Carl Richards, an employment specialist at Fox Williams, says: 'Love contracts seek to protect genuine risks to organisations and it appears that there is a definite move by employers to make their position on this issue clear to their employees.

'As people spend more time in the workplace, it is perhaps not surprising intimate relationships develop, and employers are becoming aware of the associated risks to their businesses.'

The survey showed that more than 20% of respondents said that if such a business risk were identified, they would consider relocating one of the co-workers, and that subject to the availability of alternative roles, the person to be moved is more likely to be the junior employee.

However, Richard Nicolle, a senior solicitor in City firm Denton Wilde Sapte's employment department, says employers considering such a policy should be wary.

'If the policy is that it is always the woman, for example, who is moved in these situations, then that would clearly be direct discrimination.

But if it is always the junior person in the relationship to be moved, this could be indirect discrimination since it is often women in the more junior, administrative roles.

'You also can't justify a policy saying there should be no romantic links.

There are possibly rights under the Human Rights Act 1998 - if the employer is a public body or authority - under the provisions that protect the right to family and private life.'

He says the circumstances in which employers can legitimately dismiss romantically linked staff are 'few and far between'.

'There are times when security or confidentiality issues are compromised, but this sort of thing can generally be accommodated by moving someone to somewhere else in the office if you can show it is a genuine concern and not a policy for policy's sake.

'To have a policy on this would be nonsense really.

As long as whatever is happening happens outside work, the couple would be entitled to say "mind your own business".'

Mr Nicolle warns, though, that lovesick colleagues should beware of being too amorous in the office.

'If anyone displaying a relationship in the office - whether in the broom cupboard or anywhere else - is sufficiently distracting to employees, then there could be grounds for disciplinary measures for the disruption,' he says.

A human resources manager from a City law firm - who asked not to be named - was asked by his management to write a policy on office liaisons.

He says there was much discussion about what the approach should be if work colleagues are caught in flagrante delicto on office premises.

'In the end, we decided that if it was in work time, then they should be working and not in the broom cupboard, so this could be grounds for disciplinary measures.'

Mr Richards says such policies are often effective as a deterrent against inappropriate behaviour.

'It seems many employers introduce such policies, as there is value in simply having them in their staff handbook.

Employees are aware of how their employer views relationships between co-workers and the risks the organisation is attempting to prevent.'

The human resources manager says the policy he drafted went on the firm's intranet and surprisingly received little reaction - adverse or otherwise - from employees.

He says: 'By and large, the only times when such situations cause problems are if the relationship breaks down; if one of the parties is having an affair and the spouse wants to get revenge and rings the managing director or something, or if it's a "boss and subordinate" relationship, there can be quite strong concerns about favouritism.'

He says the theme of his policy was not 'thou shalt not', but was designed to encourage employees to think about the consequences before starting a relationship.

'The policy said it would be a good idea for the employees to inform their managers on a confidential basis.

The theme was to make them aware that they could get themselves into hot water and, conscious of that, emphasised the fact that they should separate work from personal relationships.'

For married couples, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 offers some statutory protection, with a ban on discrimination against someone on the grounds of marital status.

However, in practice, the human resources manager says there can be a problem with husbands and wives working together, especially - as he experienced in his former job - when a wife works in personnel and the husband's name is on the redundancy list.

A Law Society spokesman says there are no written rules regarding relationships between solicitors.

He adds: 'If, for instance, the solicitors are on each side of a transaction, it is best to be open with the client at the outset.

That advice should be in writing so the client can't allege later that he wasn't told.

If the solicitor feels his relationship with the other solicitor is an inhibition, he really ought not to continue acting for the client.'

Law firms are surprisingly coy about talking through their policies towards staff relationships.

But married lawyers working within the same firm are even more sheepish.

Cheesy questions about where people met and how they kept it quiet are enough to make most people a bit embarrassed.

There is also a professional issue.

As one partner married to a colleague - neither wanted to be named - said: 'We don't want to be seen as freaky.

We're lawyers.'

But there are numerous married couples within firms throughout the country: City firm Allen & Overy has good form.

Anne Baldock and her husband Graham Vinter are both partners in the projects group.

The firm was also the place where Jane and Toby Gibson qualified, met and became associates.

They recently moved to Newcastle where they joined Gibson & Co as partners (Toby is the tenth generation of Gibsons to work at the firm).

Christine Gillham, an associate in Eversheds' Norwich office, met her husband (who has now retired) when they were both working in the property department of City firm Gouldens.

Husband and wife teams have thrived in other fields of the law, such as leading legal recruiter Gareth Quarry and his solicitor wife, Jill Whitehouse.

But the chocolates and flowers for the most romantic law firm has to go to Romanian firm Nestor Nestor Diculescu Kingston Petersen.

Until recently it was run by not one, but two, married couples.

The firm - the first private legal practice in Romania - was formed in 1990 by Ion and Manuela Nestor, who graduated together from Bucharest University in 1976, worked together as in-house counsel for the same company between 1978 and 1984 and subsequently married.

In 1995, US husband and wife team Andrew Kingston and Patricia Petersen joined the partnership and remained there until 2000 when they returned to the US.

Senior partner Ion Nestor firmly says the double partnership contributed to the firm's success in the early years.

'The fact that we had each other bound by a stronger relationship, the certitude of trust, the full and unlimited dedication to each other, altogether resulted probably in creating an unrivalled level of confidence and pushed us ahead,' he says.

One day your eyes meet over a steaming photocopier late into the night, the next it is double the equity - there may be problems with relationships in the office, but there can also be very tangible rewards.

Lucy Hickman is a freelance journalist