shutterstock_107370659

Not everyone wants to open their heart about who their new squeeze might be – especially if they work in the same office – according to a new survey of UK workers from Nottingham-based recruitment specialists staffbay.com.

The staffbay.com poll reveals that over half (55 per cent) of the 5,000 people surveyed think that office romances should be kept a secret – with the majority (62 per cent) being men not wanting the dalliances to be made public.

Elliot Kidd, co-founder of staffbay.com, says: “These results are revealing, as they show that more than half of employees would rather there wasn’t a whirlwind office romance going on in the office as it distracts them from getting on with their job.

“Recent reports have shown that a third of office romances end in marriage, but there’s no doubt that they can cause problems in a workplace, especially when they go wrong. There’s nothing worse for the morale of an office than when two people can’t stand the sight of each other, and maintaining a professional relationship when a romantic one ends is a particularly hard trick to pull off, and can lead to one or both parties looking for a new job.”

The results of the Valentine’s survey are in marked contrast to another recent staffbay.com poll which showed that a staggering 1 in 5 workers would consider sleeping with their boss in order to gain promotion.

Elliot adds: “To some people their career is everything, and they’ll stop at nothing to climb the ladder to a better paid job. These results also show that people are becoming a lot more open about themselves when it comes to job-related matters. The video CVs on staffbay.com highlight this perfectly – and jobseekers tend to reveal much more about themselves using this medium than in a boring old paper CV.”

Revealingly, the staffbay.com survey found that men are more likely to sleep with their boss (30 per cent) than women (8 per cent), but it seems a lot of us are willing to have a fling to get ahead in our career.