Dating in office: Try to remain professional

some workplace romances end in marriage, fewer people are likely to date a co-worker.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Dating a co-worker is rarely a good idea, but with people spending more time at work, it happens.

Workplace and etiquette experts warn employees to proceed cautiously. Don’t send flowers to the office and certainly not an electronic card, especially an X-rated one. That will get you in even hotter water than a relationship.

“People let their guard down,” says Barbara Pachter, co-author of “New Rules Work: 9 Etiquette Tips, Tools, and Techniques to Get Ahead and Stay Ahead.” “A lot of this is common sense, but when people get involved in romance, common sense goes out the window. It may ultimately impact your career.”

Apparently many workers have learned their lessons about office romance. Fewer workers are looking for love in the office, according to a Spherion Corp. survey.

Just over one-third of U.S. workers polled said they’d consider dating a co-worker, if they were single. But that number has steadily declined, from 42 percent in 2005 and 39 percent in 2007. Women, especially, are less likely to consider dating co-workers, according to the survey.

At the same time, there is less fear that a workplace romance could jeopardize one’s career, Spherion says.

“Companies have done a better job at communicating what their policies are and what some of the risks are involved. That takes away a lot of ambiguity,” says John Heins, human resources director for the Fort Lauderdale-based staffing company.

For a quarter of workers surveyed by Spherion, their workplace romances ended in marriage.

Heins met his wife while working for a previous employer. Their relationship wasn’t a problem, he said, because they worked in different departments and “we were very upfront and open with our managers,” he says.

But when such relationships go bad, it can cause headaches. The big taboo is a supervisor dating one of his or her employees; that’s never OK.

“Maybe there’s favoritism or it’s interfering with productivity of other team members,” Heins says, for example. If a manager moves one person in a relationship to another department and that worker starts performing badly, he or she could have legal recourse against the company.