Everyone and their mother are using online dating apps.
Dating apps are no longer anywhere near as stigmatized as they once were.
There is a good chance that there are several of your subordinates who are currently using online dating apps to find a partner.
You probably already suspect this.
You worry that one or more of them will see you on some fateful day as they are swiping away and deem you unprofessional.
They won’t.
Well, if your profile picture is of you jumping into a pool with half of your naked butt in the air, that would be a different story.
A regular headshot on the other hand is as mundane as it gets.
That’s professional enough to keep your name as nothing more than a curious whisper among coworkers as they chow down on their packed lunches during their lunch breaks, in lieu of rambunctious gossip.
To be honest, your subordinates are a lot more worried about what you would think about them if you were to happen upon their dating profile on an online dating app.
Would it affect how you view them?
Would they have to worry about not getting that raise or positive quarterly evaluation?
Will you fire them if they have the audacity to swipe left on you and somehow you find that out?
See, your employees are the ones who will pose a lot more questions to themselves and among each other about what you may or may not do to them upon discovering that they happened upon your online dating profile.
The floodgates of anxiety does settle though.
Once they see that you didn’t angrily call them into your office and hand them a pink slip for daring to swipe left on your dating profile, the unease eventually settles.
They are no longer taken aback whenever your dating profile is recycled into their cavalcade of matches.
They swipe left without a moment’s hesitation nor a sliver of fear.
The nervous energy in the office has tapered off.
Lunch gossip has segued from conversations about your dating profile to regular office gossip.
It is not a big deal anymore.
As long as you are just as professional as you normally are around your employees, especially during the first month of appearing on online dating apps, your employees will not lose respect for you nor see you as unprofessional simply for the sake of discovering your dating profile on online dating apps.
Although the majority of your employees who come across your dating profile will do everything in their power to avoid checking it out, a few still might.
It’s imperative that your bio and the rest of the photos that you have on your profile speak to you as a person in a respectable way.
In the first few weeks of some of your employees discovering your dating profile, information gleaned from your bio will be mentioned as nuggets of gossip around work stations and break rooms.
Don’t include any information that you wouldn’t want your subordinates to know about.
Use appropriate language that is befitting a boss or someone in authority.
A respectable bio that eschews poor grammar, polarizing topics and negativity is nice and boring.
It doesn’t give your employees that much to talk about.
Using this approach allows the gossip to quickly move from what you had to say in your bio to what two people are rumored to be dating but are keeping it “hush hush” at the office.
Within a month, your dating profile will be completely old news.
Hopefully, by that time or soon after, a newly-found relationship prospect becomes a welcomed fixture in your life.