❤️❤️ Are office romances bouncing back?
❤️ Valentine’s Day polling
📊 📊 Desirable sectors for a partner to work in
🤖 AI and the future of relationships
Welcome to the dozen new subscribers since last weeks email. If you are new here, my name is Jimmy McLoughlin, a former Downing Street adviser turned podcaster. I write this notebook on the most interesting things I have seen on the future of work, jobs, technology and politics.
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We are undertaking polling this year alongside FocalData on the future of work and jobs.
❤️ Valentine’s Day polling
With Valentine’s day this week, we decided to ask about relationships in the workplace, to my mind there are three major trends that have potentially impacted love in the workplace over the last 10 years. They are dating apps, #metoo movement and of course the pandemic which has led to more remote working.
The data found that 4 in 10 Britons have had a romantic relationship in the workplace, (but 20% of them have never told anyone about it).
Almost 1 in 3 Gen Zers (aged between 16-24) had had a relationship in the workplace.
The exclusive poll of over 1,000 people was conducted by FocalData between 8th-9th February 2023.
Here are other key findings:
Overall, work is still the third most common place to meet romantic partners after friends and family and a pub or bar setting
37% said flirting was appropriate in the office, whilst 48% said it was not
Perhaps, the statistic that I found most surprising was:
51% of Brits believe that employers should provide guidance on flirting
Interestingly, more men were in favour of guidance than women, and the age group that were least in favour of guidance were 18-24 year olds (Perhaps the idea of various ExCo’s made up of 50 something people designing flirting guidelines was too cringeworthy to consider.)
📊 📊 Desirable sectors
We surveyed which sectors were the most desirable for a partner to work in and which would be most challenging to maintain a relationship in.
The most desirable sector for a partner to work in was healthcare (21%) , but interestingly it also came top of the hardest to maintain a relationship
Finance, health and fitness and law were the next top ranking desirable careers for a partner to work in - see graph below
Media came in at 8%, and even more startlingly, the charity sector was just 6%
And when it came to those sectors were it would be hardest to maintain a relationship in - a whopping 22% saying government and public sector would be hard, ranking alongside retail and hospitality at 23%
Do these results take you by surprise, do let us know by clicking reply
Or perhaps forward this email to a friend that works in one of the sectors above.
🤖 AI and relationships
When asking more about the future of relationships, more than 1 in 8 Brits would consider a sexual relationship with a robot, rising to 1 in 6 for 18-24 year olds.
Whereas when you asked about whether people would consider a romantic relationship with a robot, this dropped to just 1 in 12.
Summary
Overall, I was quite surprised by the results, I had expected bigger generational shifts and was taken aback that so many of the Gen Z had already had a romantic relationship in the office, particularly when you consider the pandemic.
Whilst technology has undoubtedly had a major impact on the way we find a partner, it is still the case that the workplace is key area for romantic relationships.
The Government has encouraged us back to the office to help the economy at various points, perhaps there are other stronger campaigns the Government could run to encourage a return to the workplace.
I am lined up to do quite a big of media over the next few days on these topics, hit reply to this email or reach out on Twitter
Big thanks to the team at FocalData who are so supportive of what we are trying to do at Jimmy’s Jobs, if you have polling needs (and who doesn’t need to understand their market better at some point) do reach out to them or myself.
Next week
We had a very strong response to our post last week about Steve Bartlett and Tim Armoo here. We’ll be returning to that theme next week.
So make sure you are subscribed
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