I had a close friend who was working in a senior position with a reputed company. She put in a lot of hard work and she was unofficially considered as the next in line for the position of divisional head. Just a couple of months before her promotion, her Divorce case came up in court. She had to take a lot of time off the work for the legal proceedings. So, it came as a shock to her when the promotion went to someone else and it further affected her performance. The personal and professional problems took their toll on her and she was finally transferred to a less challenging position within the organisation.

Even if a person is glad about separation from the spouse and is looking forward to his divorce, he might still regret his decision when he goes through the strenuous proceedings in the court. These hardships would most certainly have negative influence on his personal as well as his professional life. While your family and friends might understand your pain and make allowance for your shortcomings, you might have to face entirely different and more difficult problems at work. People who had appreciated your work before might turn out to be your worst critics when you feel devastated.

Once you have filed for divorce, you might find yourself in the middle of problems at your workplace. Here are some of the things that might result from it:

Performance: When you are going through your divorce, you are almost certainly bound to be disturbed by it. It is natural for your performance to take a dip due to your worries and disturbed mind. From the perspective of the management, they have to suffer a lowered productivity from your end. Divorce might be a one-time affair for you. But with over 50% of marriages ending in a divorce, there might be many such people in your organisation who are going through a similar bad patch. Naturally, it might amount to a major loss to the company. The company would naturally be unhappy about it and it would reflect in your appraisals and promotion.

Time Constraint: Legal proceedings are time-consuming and can even take years to complete especially in the case of a contested divorce. It would be difficult for you to spend time on the litigation and contribute to the work simultaneously. Also, the custodial parent would have the entire responsibility of taking care of the child. This would make it even more difficult to balance between professional and personal lives.

Colleagues: Nothing could hurt you more than the gossips and bad mouthing from your colleagues. Also, you would see people around you turning philosophers and offering advices which are mostly useless. There would be another section of people who would come and express their sympathies to you. So, even if you were trying to forget your personal problems at work, these people would not let you to.

Bad Habits: There are statistics to prove that a person is more susceptible to bad habits such as drinking and drugs after a divorce. This would naturally have a serious impact on his professional life and can even render him jobless.

Sharing the Workplace: If the couple work in the same company, frequent encounters between them would bring back feelings of pain and anger making it difficult to concentrate on their work.

With one out of two marriages ending in divorce, even the companies cannot ignore the problem. Terminating the employee is not a wise solution for the problem. With a little effort, the company can take initiatives such as providing counselling services, compensation leave, etc. during these troubled times. It would not only benefit the employees but also would be useful in getting the best out of them at work. After all only a happy employee can be a productive employee.