With spring not too far off, our thoughts turn to romance. It’s all humans can do to resist hope of new love as the weather slowly begins to warm and flowers start to make their yearly plans. But what about in the office? Romance in the office has always seemed to carry with it a stigma. Maybe its due to those co-worker pairs who make a quick go of a love affair before breaking it off and returning to the office, where they can exchange bad vibes and shoot daggers at each other for the balance of their careers. Or maybe its due to supervisors or bosses dating lower-ranked employees, and giving them (or appearing to give them) preferential treatment. Whatever the reason, it’s all now been deeply impacted by the #metoo movement. So where do employees who answered Comparably’s queries about romance in the workplace stand on the issue of dating at work in 2019?
Over 15% Say They’ve Dated Their Boss or a Supervisor
It appears the old stigma is still in place. 15% of male respondents and 17% of female respondents admitted to having dated their boss at one time or another. Unlike more common dating between co-workers, dating the boss carries with it an inevitable level of controversy as well as judgment from other employees who question the motives of the relationship. Women were slightly more quick to say they had dated a boss, which may have to do with the amount of male bosses in the workplace and their relative comfort levels in pursuing female employees.
African-Americans apparently date their bosses at a significantly higher number than average. When responses are separated by ethnic groups, we see that 24% of African-American workers report dating their boss at some point. Hispanic and Latino employees (12%), as well as Asian or Pacific Islander respondents (11%), both reported dating the boss slightly less often than the mainstream average.
Longtime employees are the most likely to have dated their boss among employee experience levels. 18% of those who have been with a company for six to ten years admit to having dated their boss or supervisor. That number starts at 10% for entry-level employees and rises with each experience grouping, implying that it’s a numbers game and eventually we may be willing to give the boss a chance at romance the longer we’re exposed to the hierarchy of office work. Numbers begin to dip again for the “over 10 years” segment.
Following a similar line of thinking, the 46-50 age group was the most likely to say they had dated a boss. Numbers generally stay between 10-15% until we hit that 46-50 spike, where numbers get closer to 20%. There may be a correlation here between the average age of a boss in the US correlating with the age of a potential dating partner among the office pool.
Those with a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree are very unlikely to say they’ve dated a boss or supervisor. Conversely, numbers are much higher than average for high school age respondents, and hover around the 20% range for those who report “some college” or an Associate’s degree. And then, a major drop for the more prestigious degrees. It may be that those who have more advanced educational degrees secure their places in life earlier than others, including marriage.
More Than One-Quarter of Employees Have Dated a Co-W0rker
When it comes to dating co-workers, employees are a little more tolerant and willing. Still, nearly three-quarters say they’ve never dated a co-worker. Whether this is situational (i.e. they are married or haven’t been in the workforce long to have considered interoffice dating) or a hard-and-fast personal policy not to date at work is unclear.
As with the above question regarding whether they had ever dated a boss, African-American respondents were more likely than average to have dated a co-worker as well. They are joined this time by the Hispanic and Latino segment, who also reported “yes” at a slightly higher rate than average. Asian or Pacific Islander responses were lower than the average by nearly 10%.
Among respondents, all the age groups tended to vote similarly to the overall numbers.This bolsters the notion that dating between co-workers is and has been a somewhat acceptable notion to US employees for decades, most likely because it does not carry the inherent questions of favoritism that accompany a situation where an employee dates a higher-ranked supervisor.
Similar responses are present when data is segmented by the employee’s experience level in the workplace. A slightly more pronounced dip accrues as the years progress than was the case when the data was parsed by age of respondent.
Women Are Three Percent More Comfortable Talking About Sex at Work
Only 12% of men say they’re okay with talking about their sex lives at work.Men have traditionally been thought to be more comfortable being themselves at work thanks to a workplace largely dominated by their sex. However, the question Comparably asked was specifically about the respondents’ personal sex lives and not sex in general, which may explain why men seem more modest in the data.
Among ethnicities, African-Americans and Hispanic or Latino workers again voted “yes” more regularly than the average.Asian-American employees, however, voted “yes” less regularly than any other subgroup, and notably lower than the average responses.
Sex talk at work is really a generational issue.The 18-25 segment answered that they did feel comfortable talking about sex at work at 25%, a much greater percentage than the overall average. This declines immediately starting with the 26-30 group, bottoming out at nearly 5% with those over 50. This could mean that either office culture itself has loosened up over the last decades, or that young people are always more comfortable talking about sex no matter what decade it is.
Love is in bloom in Los Angeles.17% of respondents from LA said they were comfortable talking about sex at work, with only 5% in Minneapolis responding similarly. Whether this has to do with Midwest modesty or the weather in either locale is a question for further investigation. (Although if temperature has anything to do with love being in the air, Phoenix is really dragging its heels.)
Methodology
- A total of 15,086 respondents participated in the study
- Questions were in Yes/No format. A total of three survey questions were included. Each survey was initiated sometime between February 2018 and February 2019. Results are as of February 4, 2019.
- Have you ever dated a boss or supervisor while at the same company?
- Have you ever dated a co-worker while at the same company??
- Do you talk about your sex life with your co-workers?
- People of all ages, educational backgrounds, ethnicities and experience levels were included.
- Employees hail from across 50,000 small, mid-size, and large US companies (VC-funded, privately-held, and public) to household brands like Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Uber, etc.
About Comparably
Comparably is an online career destination for compensation and workplace culture data with a mission to make work dramatically more transparent and rewarding. Employees can anonymously and publically rate their company culture and access salary data through the lens of specific demographics, including gender, ethnicity, age, location, years of experience, company size, title/department, and education. With the most comprehensive and structured data in the industry, it has accumulated 10 million ratings and hundreds of thousands of salary records by employees at 50,000 U.S. companies, from startups to Fortune 50 businesses. The company’s data-driven approach has quickly made it a trusted media resource for salary and workplace culture, and one of the fastest-growing SaaS solutions for employer branding. For more information, go to Comparably.com. For workplace culture and salary studies, including Comparably’s annual Best Places to Work and Best CEOs awards, go to Comparably.com/blog.
