CareerBuilder Valentine’s Day Study Looks at Office Romance

Written By ESR News Blog Editor Thomas Ahearn

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, leading human capital solutions provider CareerBuilder has released a survey of workers that takes a closer look at office romance. According to CareerBuilder’s annual Valentine’s Day study, 37 percent of workers have dated a co-worker and 30 percent of those office romances have led to marriage.

Among those workers who had an office romance, the CareerBuilder Valentine’s Day study found the most common places where the relationship started was at happy hour (12 percent), late nights on the job (11 percent), lunches (11 percent), and chance meetings outside of work (10 percent).

The CareerBuilder Valentine’s Day study also found more than one third of workers who have had an office romance – 36 percent – had to keep their relationship a secret, although 1 in 4 – 25 percent – had accidentally run into co-workers while out on a date with their office sweethearts.

However, some workers steered clear of “mixing business with pleasure” and getting involved with co-workers. The CareerBuilder Valentine’s Day study revealed work-related factors that could make a co-worker “undateable.” These workplace dating “deal breakers” included:

• Doesn’t work on a consistent basis – 39 percent
• Has already dated someone else at work – 25 percent
• Travels extensively for work – 21 percent
• Has to work nights – 8 percent
• Earns less money than me – 6 percent
• Has to work weekends – 6 percent

However, when broken down by gender, the CareerBuilder Valentine’s Day study found women less likely than men to date someone who didn’t work on a consistent basis (52 percent versus 28 percent of men), had previously dated a co-worker, (29 percent versus 21 percent), or earned less than them (10 percent versus 2 percent).

The national survey used for the CareerBuilder Valentine’s Day study was conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder and included 3,056 full-time, private sector workers across industries and company sizes. The complete results of the CareerBuilder Valentine’s Day study are available here.

CareerBuilder is a global leader in human capital solutions and its online career site, CareerBuilder.com®, is the largest in the United States with more than 24 million unique visitors and 1 million jobs. For more information about CareerBuilder, visit www.careerbuilder.com.

Happy Valentine’s Day from ESR

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