So another Valentine’s Day has been and gone. But Sunday night wasn’t the greatest night for it, was it? Not many people feel like wining and dining until the early hours when they’ve got a meeting first thing on Monday morning. Unless, of course, if you’re in the HR and IT departments – but more of that later.

Cuddling up in front of the telly last night seemed the least worst option. And that actually revealed an unexpected romantic gem in the previously unimaginable guise of Gordon Brown. Yes, that Gordon Brown.

The prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland poured his heart out to Piers Morgan, the former tabloid editor and Britain’s Got Talent judge, on the latter’s chat show. It was unprecedented insight into Brown’s private life. Of course, the timing was convenient with a general election just round the corner. And it’s nice, but naive, to think it was a coincidence that the programme was aired on Valentine’s Day, when we’re feeling a bit warm and lovey (for those who weren’t, there was Mel Gibson’s gore-fest Apocalypto on the other side). But the stand-out part of the interview was not his relationship with Tony Blair – they didn’t always get on, quelle surprise – but his relationship with his wife Sarah, which he described as “a great love story”. Although it was the desired outcome of the programme makers and his private advisers, we saw a side of him that all too often gets missed out in the ongoing debate among politicians, their parties and the public.

And what was that about HR and IT? Well, if love is hard for the prime minister to talk about, it’s nothing compared with how difficult employers and employees find it to communicate on the subject. Are companies better off sidestepping the tricky legal implications by banning relationships between colleagues, or fostering a thriving employer brand by being open-minded about the issue? It’s a question that’s remained unanswered for many a year. To try to help you solve the issue in your workplace, I’ve looked at both sides of the argument in my latest feature. And, in asking for insights on the CIPD community pages, I have also uncovered a previously unknown alliance between the HR and IT departments. IT turns you on, but not off again, it seems.

Relationships developed in secrecy outside the assumed knowledge of manager and colleagues often tend to end badly. In Brown’s case, though, a little secrecy didn’t hurt. He proposed on a beach in Scotland, without a ring. He joked with Morgan: “If I’d have walked into a jeweller’s as the chancellor of the Exchequer and asked for a wedding ring, I think that might have made the papers.”