When it comes to office romances, almost 80 percent of office workers polled would keep such a relationship secret, even though 70.2 percent of respondents have a positive view of such relationships, a survey released yesterday by the online job bank yes123 found.
Reasons for keeping such romances secret included an unwillingness to become the target of workplace gossip and to be seen as unable to differentiate between corporate and private interests, respondents said.
Only 20.4 percent of respondents said they would be willing to make an office romance public.
The poll, which was conducted between Aug. 10 and Thursday among job bank members aged between 20 and 40, was released ahead of the Qixi Festival (“Lovers’ Day”) today.
Asked about their plans for the festival, 48.7 percent of respondents said they have no plans to do anything romantic today and would stay home in the evening, while 40.6 percent said they are not married and have no friends of the opposite sex.
Of single respondents, 10.5 percent plan to attend a singles’ mixer today, while 7.9 percent said they would tell the object of their affections of their feelings.
The main reasons cited by singletons for their unattached status were a limited number of friends (70.2 percent), a lack of confidence about their appearance (44.6 percent), dislike of going out (39 percent), long work hours and heavy workload (30.1 percent) and lack of income (26.2 percent).
The poll found that 46.6 percent of respondents said they had had an office romance, 80 percent of which occurred between coworkers, while 30.8 percent involved a superior-subordinate relationship.
Being married proved no impediment, as the poll found 15.5 percent of those who said they had been involved in such a romance said at least one of the people was married at the time.
Among the reasons cited for such workplace romances were “feelings growing over time” (60.8 percent), a shared understanding of and being considerate of work conditions (54.7 percent), shared areas of interest (52.4 percent), admiring another’s work ability (38.8 percent) and being too busy to develop relationships with people outside the office (28.9 percent).
As to the benefits of office romantics, 62.5 percent of respondents said they allowed couples to spend more time together, while 58.7 percent cited helping each other at work and 57.6 percent thought they would make their commute to work easier due to carpooling.
A similar poll of companies found that just 7.7 percent of respondents have rules banning office romances, but while 32.5 percent have no such regulations, they still tend to discourage them.
The poll collected 1,316 valid questionnaires from individuals and 938 from firms, and has a margin of error of 2.7 percentage points.
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