Love is immanent! And office love, a previously taboo, seems now more tolerable and more likely to end up in happy endings, according to a latest survey released yesterday by Zhaopin.com, an online recruitment website.
Nearly half (42.0 percent) the respondents said love affairs occurred time to time in office, while another 17 percent said such romance is "always" there.
Over half (51 percent) of the romances led to happy marriages, slightly higher than the break-ups (49 percent).
Senior Zhaopin analysts regarded office love as natural, as it's easy for people to fall in love with their work partners who spend most of the day with them. Coworkers of the same ages, background and working experiences have more in common to communicate on, they noted.
Despite a 75-percent bless for such relationship, for some other workers, this workshop love is annoying. Fifteen percent in the survey believed such relationship would break the balance between the colleagues and result in unfairness, while 6 percent worry it may harm benefits of their own. Slightly over 4 percent said they would definitely put their foot down such relationship when it involves their bosses.
The worry may not always be reasonable, however, as the survey indicates most, or nearly 70 percent, of office love happens between coworkers of the similar ladders, though it could also happen between employees of different ladders (15 percent), bosses and their secretaries (9 percent) and employees and their clients (6 percent). The chance is slimmest between bosses and mid-level officials, as the occurrence rate is a mere 1.5 percent in the survey.
On the other hand, companies are taking an increasing tolerant attitude toward office love, as nearly half (49 percent) of the company respondents say they won't interfere into such personal affairs and 10 percent said they bless the lovers.
Only 5.6 percent of the respondents said they will firmly act against such practices and order one of the two parties involved to leave once their affair is exposed.
(Shanghai Daily August 16, 2005)
