World of Work Spouses in Kenyan\nOrganizations<\/em>, sampled 2,550 employees. It was conducted between last\nDecember and January 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe study established that workplace spouses were relished as\nthey offered emotional support in the office, along with a close connection\nthat allowed sharing of personal issues. The nature of the relationships was platonic.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A further 150 human resource professionals were separately\nsampled to find out the effect of work spouse relationship on work productivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWork spouses make employees feel safe and supported because\nthey have someone to bounce their ideas off of without feeling shy,\u201d Corporate\nStaffing Services Managing Partner, Perminus Wainaina said at report launch in\nNairobi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey also help them get more work done faster because they\nwork more seamless rather than if either of them had to work with someone less\nin synch with them.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The findings of the study come four days before Valentine\u2019s\nDay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More revealingly, the survey unearthed that more than half\n(52 percent) of workers kept their work spouse as a secret from their real\nspouses with only 48 percent of them disclosing this information to their\nspouses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Further, it revealed that more than half (52 percent) of work\nspouse relationships tend to last between 1-4 years with only 10 percent being able to last longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Regarding the structure and type of work wives and husbands,\nnine out of ten (90 percent) workers said that it\u2019s often co-workers in the\nsame administration level in the organisational hierarchy i.e. a colleague\neither in the same department or in another department. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Only a paltry eight percent of workers engaged in work spouse\nrelationships with their subordinate or supervisor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the flipside, according to Wainaina, work spouse\nrelationships may harm work productivity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey can lead to hurt feelings, divisiveness, tarnished\nreputations, and even attrition if employees feel they are in an unhealthy work\nenvironment. Just like in a real relationship, fallouts can be very messy,\u201d\nsaid Wainaina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When further dissected, 59 percent of work wives and husbands\nsaid they kept their interactions confined to the office setting while 41\npercent kept in touch even outside work on weeknights and weekends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They said that 60 percent of what they discussed revolved around office goings on, including office gossip and politics, work problems and wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The survey showed that 67 percent of the workers have had\ntheir work spouse influence their career decisions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFrom the research, it is clear that work spouse\nrelationships have a big effect on productivity and output, something that the\nHR professionals concurred with. About 77% of the professionals said they are\nagainst work spouse relationships,\u201d said Wainaina. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most organizations (51 percent) said they do not have any\npolicies that provide direction on workplace relationships, something that Mr\nWainaina challenged organizations to adopt to better help employees to manage\nthem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0\u201cBad experiences when work spouse relationships spiral out of control are the reasons why many firms opt for Human Resource policies. If and when a policy is in place, then the HR has a guideline on how to deal with or even have an opportunity to discuss with the \u2018couple\u2019 what happens if the relationship ends or is facing challenges,\u2019Mr Wainaina said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read also: <\/strong>The Decent Work Agenda<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six out of ten workers in Kenya are in a work spouse relationship, purely platonic for emotional support, a new report shows. Human resource firm Corporate Staffing Services on Monday…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[111],"tags":[443,802,1498,1553],"class_list":["post-8012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-responsibility","tag-corporate-staffing-services","tag-human-resources","tag-valentines-day","tag-work-spouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}