Asking for a (work) friend: Why are office flings in Czechia more shrug than scandal?

Living and working in Czechia comes with a unique set of cultural challenges – and some questions you're not sure who to ask. Why can't I find a job when the demand for the foreign workforce is high? Is there discrimination against non-EU applicants? Is it rude to skip teambuilding? Dinah Richter Spritzer, a Prague-based communications coach and workplace engagement strategist, has seen it all and is down to help. Ask her your questions here. 

There is no Czech law regulating consensual romance in the office – unless you count hygiene regulations.

If your workplace feels like a singles bar after midnight, even though no one is single, that doesn't mean you don't have the right to be uncomfortable.

In my professional experience as a consultant, the greater opportunities women have for leadership in a firm, the less likely there is to be tolerance for, or even interest in, sleeping one’s way to success.

What you need to consider is whether these office affairs are undermining your career trajectory, even indirectly.

Sexual shenanigans at work aren't uniquely Czech. The pandemic seems to have done nothing to curb workplace passion across the globe. In 2026, a Forbes Advisor survey found that 40 percent of US workers had been unfaithful to a partner with a work colleague.

Most American companies maintain written rules barring managers from relationships with direct reports. Those rules exist to prevent bias, favoritism, and the messy aftermath of couplings that can be detrimental to morale, productivity, and company reputation. 

These may be some of the negative impacts you are experiencing, along with the inequity of a colleague gaining workplace advantages through sex. 

The EU is a different universe. Privacy is paramount, and in several member states, such as Germany and Spain, labor frameworks tend to limit how far employer policies can regulate consensual relationships between colleagues.

To be fair, meeting a life partner in the office is as common as going for a beer with your colleagues after work. But combining work and sexual intrigue can lead to a variety of unfair scenarios. Which brings us to Czechia.

Let's take a step back and talk about communism and sex. Before 1989, office relationships were rarely framed as an ethical issue. Collective work environments tended to tolerate or even encourage work flings and eschewed discussions of gender, power, or consent. 

Following the Velvet Revolution, it took a while for multinational human resources rules to infiltrate workplaces across the former Eastern Bloc, including policies that addressed sex and influence. 

The last available survey on the topic, conducted by LMC in 2010 among 170 companies, revealed that 73 percent of Czech HR leaders would not address intimate relationships among colleagues unless it was visibly damaging their work.

To this day, the married-male-boss-sleeping-with-his-female-subordinate is a recurring trope in mainstream Czech entertainment. These affairs are depicted as an ordinary, often comic, fact of office life with zero moralizing.

Yet a wide body of research shows us that women's chances of getting ahead in the Czech workplace, compared to men, are far more limited. 

The country ranks 25th out of 27 EU countries on the European Institute for Gender Equality Index, and second to last specifically in the work domain. Czechia has one of the highest gender pay gaps in the EU at 18.5 percent (second to Estonia), with roughly 17 percent of management positions held by women compared to a 35–36 percent EU average.

Who gets shamed by co-workers when equals on the org-chart have a consensual work affair? It's not Honza, Jirka, or Petr.

Vojtěch Bednář, a sociologist and workplace culture specialist who leads the consulting firm Firemní Sociolog, advises against reporting suspected (or obscenely obvious) dalliances to human resources. In a country that’s “liberal and tolerant,” toward romantic relationships at work, that may backfire on you.

“Generally, whatever people are doing in their free time should not influence their behavior, performance, decision making, or professional relationships at work,” says Bednář. 

He does encourage you to raise any behavior you find unprofessional – favoritism, unfair advancement, compromised decisions – without making it about your consenting colleague’s bedroom activities.

If you strongly object to the behavior you’re seeing, you basically have three options:

If you’re still finding it hard to distinguish between a “none of my business” matter and workplace malfeasance, the problem likely has little to do with sex and everything to do with trust.

As you consider whether to stay or move on, it's worth asking whether that trust is valued at your workplace, or is quietly undermined by relationships that could influence your career trajectory from the sex-fuelled sidelines.

Seen something at work you can’t unsee? Send your questions to Dinah here. You can also find her on LinkedIn and read more about her work at www.inclusionstars.com.