Work is one of the main places where people socialize, so it’s not surprising that 34% of Canadian employees say they have dated an office colleague at some point in their career. In 26% of these cases, the relationship even led to marriage, according to the latest survey published just before Valentine’s Day by CareerBuilder.ca. This survey was conducted online with 1000 full-time employees from all industries in the private sector.
These data are quite close to those found by the job site in the same period in 2014. At that time, 35% of Canadian employees reported having had a romantic relationship in their workplace, and 25% of these romances resulted in marriage.
The Christmas party as a trigger
To explain the beginnings of these romantic relationships, the workers interviewed first raised the fact of working in the same department (25%), a late night at work (17%), an after-work happy hour (13%) or a lunch break (13%). 9% also fell in love while working together on a project and 9% started their relationship during a Christmas party organized by the company.
HR on the alert
These links between colleagues have nonetheless to be taken into consideration by the company. This is because mixing work and feelings sometimes leads to a certain lack of attention or judgement on the part of employees when there be a surge of conflict once the relationship ends. To guard against such excesses some employers plan to adopt a code of ethics governing personal relationships while others would rather respond on a case by case basis.