Why banning friendships in the workplace is ridiculous when so many are working from home - David Behrens

But as of this week the very idea is likely to get you the sack – at least if you work at ITV, where it’s been decreed that any staff or even work experience people will have their contracts terminated if they fail to declare a relationship with a colleague. ‘Relationship’ for this purpose means not just a sexual or romantic connection but also just being friends with someone, according to the memo from HR.

It’s a bit rich coming from a broadcaster whose biggest earners include Love Island, a show that revels in lascivious behaviour and televises it to the nation.

But more than that, it’s a shame. A shame that people are no longer trusted to observe the normal boundaries of discretion and decency by a management whose main concern seems to be avoiding a harassment lawsuit.

It was the Phillip Schofield case that brought this about, although no-one is quite sure whether he did anything wrong. Maybe he abused his power in encouraging a younger colleague into an unwise liaison and maybe that sort of thing is too common in such environments.

But what is even more common is workplace camaraderie that breeds ideas, warmth and, dare I say it, friendship. That is to be encouraged, not outlawed.

I can tell you that ITV in Leeds used to be a very sociable place indeed. I met my first wife there and it was one among probably hundreds of relationships fermented in the studios and – especially – the in-house bar on Kirkstall Road. But people respected each other and the company respected their right to privacy if they wished for it. And that’s the way it was at countless other firms.

Sometimes this would produce tensions. For years the BBC had a policy of not allowing married couples to work together in studios. But for the most part everyone was trusted to behave like an adult.

Today, adult behaviour is a problem not a virtue and HR departments have taken it upon themselves to behave like Army officers putting bromide in the tea of their oversexed squaddies.

But how is ITV’s insistence that people declare their relationships going to prevent another Phillip Schofield debacle? It’s like the police launching a crime prevention strategy based on offenders giving themselves up. And anyway, who’s to say whether a relationship is appropriate: the parties involved or some shady whistleblower with an axe to grind whom the new politics deems untouchable? It makes the office more toxic than ever.

Besides, the real workplace problem today – not just in the media but across the board – isn’t human interplay but the lack of it. Communication takes place on social media instead of in person and it’s here that the air is truly poisoned. HR departments, if they were serious about protecting the interests of their staff, would have stamped on this long ago. Instead they condone it.

It has become an expectation, if not an explicit requirement, that people will promote their work, irrespective of the consequences, on Twitter – or X as it now calls itself in an attempt to make it easier for users to sign their names.

There have been myriad examples of people finding themselves on the receiving end of the most appalling abuse because they have been encouraged to tweet as a tacit measure of their performance.

Sometimes the hatred spills off the internet and into reality. Last year, the Labour MP Charlotte Nichols was visited at her office by someone armed with a knife. And even the King has noticed the trend, commenting last week that too much online debate had descended into rancour and acrimony.

HR people could negate this by declaring X off-limits in the workplace, just as they appear to be doing with physical interaction. They should acknowledge that keeping out of harm’s way is a sign of maturity, not underachievement.

Because if there is one lawsuit HR should really be looking out for it’s the one from some psychologically scarred employee whose safety they had a duty to protect. The day someone launches a test case is the day X becomes effectively X-tinct.

In the meantime I fear we have sleepwalked in our pyjamas into a world of work where hate is acceptable but love is not.