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Dating your manager or someone senior at work

6 min read

Dating your manager, or anyone with power over your pay, reviews or schedule, is the riskiest kind of workplace romance. In a 2013 SHRM survey, nearly all employers that had a workplace-romance policy forbade it outright. Dating someone senior who isn't in your reporting line is treated more lightly by many policies, but it can still need a conversation with HR.

This post describes how it works in practice. It isn't legal advice, and policies differ by company, state and country. Whatever the situation, a no ends it. Nobody owes a more senior or more junior colleague a yes.

Two different situations

People use "senior" to mean two things, and they play out differently.

Someone in your reporting line. Your direct manager, or anyone further up the chain who affects your pay, promotions, reviews or schedule. The power gap is built in. Neither person can be sure the other is saying yes freely, and everyone else on the team may wonder about favoritism.

Someone senior but outside your line. A director in another department, a more experienced colleague on a different team, a partner at a firm who never touches your work. There's still a status gap, but nobody decides anything about the other person's career. Many policies treat this far more lightly.

If you're the more senior person, the same logic applies in reverse. You can't know whether a "yes" from someone who depends on you is free of pressure, however good your intentions.

What the numbers say

Workplace romance is common. In a January 2023 survey for SHRM of 632 working Americans (NORC's AmeriSpeak panel), 27% said they were in a workplace romance or had been in one. Among those people, 79% had dated a peer, 18% a superior and 10% a subordinate. So dating up or down the ladder happens, though it's the minority case.

The same survey found 71% of workers say their employer doesn't require employees to disclose a workplace romance. Among people who'd been in one, 40% told colleagues and 18% told their employer. And 18% said a workplace romance had negatively affected their career. That's one survey of 632 people, and it can't tell you how it goes for your company or your role.

SHRM's older 2013 survey of 380 HR professionals is more specific about reporting lines. In that survey 42% of employers had a workplace-romance policy. Among respondents whose employers had one, 99% said supervisor-subordinate relationships weren't allowed, and 45% said it also forbade romances between employees of significantly different rank. Those are HR professionals describing their policies in 2013, so today's numbers may differ. They do suggest that, where a policy exists, a ban on dating someone you report to is the norm. Workplace dating policies goes through what policies usually cover.

Why policies exist

Companies write these rules for a few reasons that have little to do with whether the two people are sincere:

What happens when it comes out

The 2013 SHRM survey asked HR professionals what actions had been taken in the previous five years when employees violated a workplace-romance policy. Transferring one employee was the most common response (34%), followed by relationship counseling (32%), a formal reprimand (21%), firing the people involved (20%), and removing someone from a supervisory role (12%). Some companies, 5% in that survey, asked couples to sign what's called a "love contract," a document saying the relationship is consensual.

Any of those can change a job for one or both people, so it's worth knowing the likely outcome at your company before anything starts.

How people handle it

These are patterns, not recommendations.

  1. Read the policy first. The handbook or intranet usually says what's allowed, who you have to tell, and what the process is. If it's silent, that doesn't mean it's allowed.
  2. Ask HR a general question. "What's the policy on a relationship between colleagues in different teams?" doesn't name anyone. If you're in the reporting line, expect HR to tell you what the rule is.
  3. Remove the reporting line. If the relationship is serious, the usual fix is that one person transfers, or the reporting line changes, before things go further. Who moves, and whether the company allows it at all, is up to the employer.
  4. Disclose in the way the policy asks. Some employers want a written disclosure, some a conversation with HR, some nothing at all.
  5. Keep it out of work. No decisions about each other's pay, reviews or projects, no messages on work chat, no shows of affection in the office.
  6. Plan for the breakup. It's the part people skip. Decide, before it matters, who'd move, who'd say what, and how you'd act around each other.

If you're only interested

If you're thinking about asking someone senior out, ask the policy question before you ask them. A short, private, outside-work invitation is the same format as for a peer, covered in how to ask a coworker out and how to ask someone out. The difference is the exit: make it easy to say no without cost, and treat a vague answer as a no. Seeing her again after a no covers the days afterward, and signs of interest helps you read what's actually going on, bearing in mind that a more junior colleague may be polite because of the power gap, not because of attraction.

Both people can have good reasons to say yes. Both can have good reasons to say no. It's a decision about your job as well as your dating life, so it's reasonable to take longer over it than you would with a stranger.

What to do next

  1. Pull up the written policy this week and find the words on relationships between employees, reporting lines and disclosure.
  2. Map the reporting line. Write down whether one of you affects the other's pay, reviews, promotion or schedule, directly or indirectly. If yes, treat it as a restricted case.
  3. Ask HR a no-names question about how the policy works for people in different teams or levels.
  4. Decide what a no costs you. If asking would make work uncomfortable whatever the answer, wait until one of you changes teams or jobs.
  5. If it's a yes, agree on disclosure before the first date: who tells HR, when, and what you'll say.
  6. Set one boundary for work (for example, no messages on company chat and no decisions about each other) and keep it.
  7. Agree what you'd do if it ends. Say it out loud once, while things are good.

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