It really is a bad idea

There are all kinds of rules against dating at the workplace, and in general, it is good advice not to date at the workplace because these relationships rarely end well and can cause all kinds of harm to the people caught in them. Luckily, I tend to wave at good advice while I let it pass me because if I had heeded it, I wouldn’t be married to the fantastic lady that I have been with for the last two decades.

But enough about me and Salma Hayek.

In general, it is a bad idea to date at the workplace, especially so if it is a relationship between a manager and a subordinate, as a study among Finnish workers shows.

They document that couples are less and less likely to meet at the workplace. In the mid-1990s, about 12.5% of Finnish couples who moved in with each other had met at the workplace. By 2016, that had dropped to about 7%. Among these couples, about 16% of relationships were between a manager and a subordinate in the mid-1990s, declining to about 8% in 2016.

Proportion of couples who met at work

Source: MacDonald et al. (2025)

But if you decide to start dating your boss, be aware that while this might give you a leg up in the short term, in the long term, you may be worse off than before. Below is a chart that shows the increase in annual income of the person who starts dating the boss in the years after the relationship begins. On average, their income rises by 7% in the year the relationship begins. But look at the figure to the right, and you see that once the relationship ends, the subordinate sees their income drop by about 18%. And of course, a large part of that drop is due to the subordinate being fired or leaving the company for personal reasons, which often comes with a much larger income cut than the 18% average.

Change in the income of the subordinate

Source: MacDonald et al. (2025)

But it’s not just the subordinate who starts dating the boss who is at risk. If a manager and a subordinate start dating, the remaining subordinates of the manager tend to feel the pain as well. On the one hand, managers tend to promote their romantic partner at the expense of other employees. On the other hand, other employees may leave the company once they feel unfairly treated. The result is that firms where the boss is dating a subordinate see turnover among other workers increase by 6%. And as we all know (or should know), higher turnover is very costly for a firm.

Worker retention drops when managers are in a relationship with subordinates

Source: MacDonald et al. (2025)