Company values, employment law and fairness at work have changed the politics of office relationships

Workplace relationships have existed as long as there have been workplaces. Many people find their life partners in the place where they spend most of their waking hours.

But the politics of the office romance have changed. For generations of senior male executives, relationships with more junior staff were commonplace. Now they are a minefield.

BP’s chief executive, Bernard Looney, has become the latest business leader to find this out to his cost.

His shock resignation took the markets off guard. Looney was forced to fall on his sword after admitting that he had failed to be fully transparent with the BP board about the number of colleagues with whom he had engaged in personal relationships. The company’s directors said they expected everyone at BP to behave in accordance with its “strong values”, while requiring its leaders to “act as role models and to exercise good judgment”.

Looney thereby joins the not-so-hallowed halls of executives whose careers have been scuppered by private dalliances.

Just days after Looney’s departure, Edward Tilly, the chair and chief executive of US-based stock market operator Cboe Global Markets, resigned after a company investigation found he had failed to disclose “personal relationships with colleagues” which “violated” company policies.

Steve Easterbrook, the British chief executive of the US group McDonald’s, was fired by the...

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