Bernard Looney and the sinister policing of office romances

I doubt whether many people will feel a pang of sympathy for Bernard Looney, former chief executive of BP who has just resigned over his failure to fully disclosure historic relationships with fellow employees. Perhaps he should have resigned last year when he declared proudly that high oil prices had turned BP into a ‘cash machine’ – a remark which hastened the imposition of a windfall tax which the industry may come bitterly to regret the next time oil prices crash. Yet the remark didn’t do Looney much personal harm – his pay was doubled last year to over £4 million. He will have a pretty decent pension, too, to go off and spend more time on his love life.

Yet something makes me rather uneasy about Looney’s downfall. Is it really the business of the BP board to poke its nose into the personal relationships of its employees? It used to be accepted that people who worked together would ask each other out and might even end up getting married. That was just ordinary life. Then arrived US-style corporate culture which saw any relationships between employees as suspicious. In some cases relationships between staff have been banned, and in others romantically-intwined employees have been made to sign a ‘consensual relationship agreement’ – as if it were only a corporation’s compliance department which can ensure that Brian from accounts isn’t locking Brenda from HR into a cellar and forcing her into a bondage session every evening after they leave work – or vice versa.

True, there might be extreme circumstances where a relationship would need to be declared, such as where one department was having to investigate another and the heads of both were having a secret fling. But for the most part, there is something extremely creepy about a corporation attempting to take over the lives of its employees.

What goes on after people have left the office for the day should be none of the company’s business. Quite apart from the objectional aspect of trying to police personal lives the whole business rather flies in the face of woke corporations’ other obsessions of diversity and inclusion. Older readers may remember a former BP chief executive, Lord Browne of Madingley, bringing forward his retirement after trying and failing to win an injunction preventing the disclosure that he had been in a relationship with Canadian man he had met on dating website. Browne later said that he had desperately tried to keep his sexuality secret because his didn’t want to upset his mother, who was unaware. Do we really want corporations forcing their employees to reveal that they are gay – which is what will inevitably happen if they are obliged to disclose details of relationships with other members of staff? Others may have justifiable reasons to want to hide relationships which cut across religious and cultural boundaries.

Have a snigger at Bernard Looney if you like, but you may end up regretting encouraging an atmosphere of suspicion if love strikes you over the office photocopier.