75% of Singaporeans keep office flings as top secrets

But 69% of bosses are okay with office romance.

According to a recent survey by JobStreet, many Singaporeans preferred to keep their relationships a secret since 75% of office staff surveyed admitted to keeping office romance under wraps. 

17% felt comfortable enough to be open about the office romance with their direct superiors from the start, and 7% were prepared to inform colleagues and management only when the relationship got serious.

These numbers suggest there is still a stigma to office romance from the point of view of the employees, although 69% of employers surveyed gave the thumbs up to office romance amongst single co-workers as long as there  were no direct conflicts of work interests.

On work performance, only 23% of office staff felt dating a co-worker would adversely impact productivity.

41% felt it would act as a morale booster; while 35% claimed they would be able to separate work from personal matters.

On the other hand, 22% of employers were confident that office romance would not affect work productivity. Their main concern was that it would become a form of distraction to those around the couple.

Only 10% of office staff surveyed were certain their company had a policy in place for office romance.

This was validated by only 5% of employers who claimed that their company had a written policy. 20% reported having an unspoken policy, and 75% mentioned they did not have any policy at all on workplace romance.