With romance in the air with the arrival of Valentine’s Day, workers looking for an office romance should head for the IT department, according to a survey from Business Environment (BE), the UK serviced offices provider.



According to the survey, 55% of IT workers revealed that they’d had a relationship or fling with someone they worked with. They were closely followed by 54% of marketing, advertising and PR professionals and 53% of telecoms workers in admitting that they’d had a work based relationship.

Overall, amongst the 3000 respondents, 37% said they’d had a relationship based at work, compared with 63% who had not. 

Interestingly, graduate trainees and scientists were the least likely to report a relationship or fling with a colleague: 81% of graduate trainees and 74% of scientists revealed that they’d had no romantic encounters at work.



Steve Moore, BE’s marketing manager commissioned the wide ranging survey which surveyed office workers throughout the UK and across a broad spread of industries. He commented: “This is a fascinating insight into the personal lives of the UK office workers. It has certainly thrown up a few surprises and challenged the office stereotypes that we assume to be true. It was particularly interesting to see that science and technology based professions have a higher incidence of office romances; as this may not necessarily reflect many people’s assumptions!”.