On Valentine's Day and Office Romances...

OK, I couldn't resist.  With Valentine's Day looming on the horizon, how could I not talk about research done on Office Romances? My interest was piqued by an alert I received about Vault's 2014 Office Romance Survey: Love Is In The Air.  But, being a librarian, I couldn't resist digging a bit deeper into the topic. If you're interested in researching this hot topic, start by searching for... 1. Articles in Business Source Complete - using terms such as Sex in the Workplace, Dating (Relationships), and Interpersonal Relationships, as well as the more cautionary: Sexual Harassment, Liability (Law), and Conflict of interests. (Initial exploratory search HERE) 2. Books in the SFU Library catalogue - using the same terms listed above for Business Source, to get titles such as:

• Relationships in organizations ; A work psychology perspective
• Organizing relationships : traditional and emerging perspectives on workplace relationships
• Intimacy : an international survey of the sex lives of people at work

3. Then jump over to our Ipsos News Centre database to find reports such as:

• Valentine's Day: Correlations Between Relationship Status and Happiness, Financial Situation
• Nearly Half of Working Adults Socialize with Colleagues
• Nine in Ten (91%) Managers and Supervisors Agree It’s Important to Improve Their Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace
• (Don't forget to check for Detailed Tables in each of the Ipsos reports -- you can often get question-by-question breakdown of the responses by various demographic factors!)

4. I was curious what the HR professionals had to offer on this topic, so I visited the SHRM site and quickly found their latest Workplace Romance survey results.  A bit more digging and I was able to compare them to the survey they did back in 2006 and an article talking about the changes during those years. 5. Back to the Vault survey that got me started... this has become an annual tradition for the Vault folks, and each edition of the survey is quoted widely in the general and business press.  Many of those news articles mix Vault results with anecdotes and statistics from other sources, so a quick Google Search for Vault "Office Romance Survey" can be a great way to start digging up other information on the topic. Questions?  You know where to find me! Mark Bodnar Business Librarian mbodnar@sfu.ca