Almost half of the examinees in the poslovi.infostud.com research, admits to having been or currently is, in a relationship with a co-worker. That relationship is still going strong for one quarter group questioned, while for more than 15% of them ended up getting married or in a long term relationship with a co-worker. Statistically speaking, this means that if you work in a company with 100 employees, every fifth colleague you have is, at the moment you are reading this, involved with another co-worker of yours or is even planning to marry them.

Starting a relationship at work was mostly a decision made by people who work on higher management levels, while practitioners and newly employed rarely made the same decision.  If chosen to start a relationship with a co-worker, the examinees usually found a partner in a person that worked at the same level of hierarchy as they did, rarely with those who were their superiors, and almost never with those who worked beneath them.  

While comparing the results of this research with the similar ones done in the region, it was concluded that relationships at the office are becoming more and more common. For example, Croatian website Moj-posao.net, got the result that every other employee in Croatia just like in Serbia, had a relationship with a co-worker. From the looks of it, in Bosnia and Herzegovina these fact numbers are a little smaller, because according to the website Posao.ba every third employee in Bosnia had a relationship at work.

On the other hand, around 55% of examinees in Serbia  has not had a relationship with someone from their office, and what is more does not want to have one, regardless of the fact whether they like someone in the company or not.

Love or sex?
It appears that, when it comes to this question, there are no gender discriminations. An equal number of men and women has been a part of a relationship with a colleague. However, it is interesting that men and women have completely different ideas about the relationship they get involved in. Women usually feel that they are truly in love, while men see the relationship as a passing affair with benefits.

According to the examinees, three out of four women who have had an affair at work, said that the affair was actually real love, while less than half of examined men shared their idea. Also, while every fifth women admits that the relationship was sex only, the same is admitted by  more than half men who took part in the research.


Employers liberal when it comes to the question of relationships at work
Most of the participants in Infostud’s research (around 90% of them) said that the relationships between employees in their companies are not forbidden or they are not familiar if they are. On the other hand, this is not true for every tenth company.

In most cases, the employers do not have a clear stand and opinion concerning the question of their employees being romantically involved, thus they would not react if they found out that someone was, in fact, together. Luckily, most of the examinees who were or are in a relationship with a colleague, never had any negative consequences cause of it. When their affair was discovered, only 10%  got fired or quit their job, some had had to work twice as hard to professionally progress  half as slow, while the small number of them requested to be moved to another department.

More on the results of Infostud’s research can be found at the web address:  http://poslovi.infostud.com/rezultati-ankete-ljubavne-veze-na-radnom-mestu/ . 

In this research by the website poslovi.infostud.com, 1452 people took part. Out of this number, two thirds are professionally employed, every fifth employee works on a time defined contract, while the rest are self-employed, artists, freelancers or working for a fee.