Okay okay: 7 out of 10 people think that flirting in the workplace is not acceptable

My first reaction was: why not? A little flirting at work, no one has ever gotten worse from that, right? But when I dug a little deeper into the research, it turned out that it’s not about ‘getting worse from flirting’; Dutch employees mainly find that getting better from flirting is not acceptable.

Ah eureka, now I get it, aside from the fact that flirting at work can go completely wrong on many fronts. Flirting to get ahead or even to get a job (5 percent have done this, huh?) doesn’t seem smart to me; to achieve that, you need to show who you are and what you can do without immediately winking. But on a Friday afternoon with a glass of wine? Don’t do it, says research from AG5, because your colleagues think romantic flirting goes too far. Business flirting is a whole different story, because that is allowed.

Now my question is: how do you flirt in a business context? I had no idea that there could be a distinction in flirting. Well, there is, because business flirting means that you choose a personal and positive approach towards business contacts. In my mind, this still fell under normal, being nice, doing your job, and being the business card of your company, but hey, that’s not it at all, because it falls under the category of business flirting. I think that sounds good too.

Moral of the story: only business, the rest we just do at home. Bye, have a nice day off.