Relationships with work colleagues

Relationships with colleagues? "It's what we do now," Rod Liddle

It is the most delicate of subjects at work - an emotional attachment to someone you know there, certainly intimate, perhaps turning into something sexual.

What if the two of you who are having the fling or the affair or the serious relationship are rivals or if it's with your boss?

There is a conventional wisdom that relationships with colleagues are to be deplored, and if it's a relationship involving the boss, then run a mile or get the lawyers in.

But does this accord with the real world, and is it even the way we should think? Rod Liddle was a BBC boss who is now one of Britain's top journalists.

He got himself into a lot of hot water after very public break-ups and make-ups with women he had been working with, so what would his advice be to a junior attracted to the boss?

But how prevalent are relationships at work? Andrew Kakabadse, Professor of International Management Development at Cranfield University, organises serious research in 17 countries and says the results show a large propotion have had sexual relationships with colleagues - apparently up to six in ten of all workers.

First broadcast on Business Daily