Poll Results: What is your dividing line between personal and professional?

Several weeks ago we posted a poll on the site asking how you managed the line between personal and professional: are your co-workers your closest confidants or do they barely know your first name?

The results are in and it seems that most of you have at least some social contact with your co-workers. The most popular answer, by far, with 62.5% of the vote was chatting with co-workers about weekend plans and that sort of thing but not engaging in anything deeper. 33.9% of you said that you did delve into more personal ground with your co-workers and counted many of them among your confidants.

Together this poll shows that a full 96.4% of respondents allow at least some of their co-workers into their personal life.

At the other end of the scale 1.8% of respondents said that their co-workers know their basic demographic information (marital status, children, etc.) but nothing beyond the bare bones. The same percentage (1.8%) reported that they share no personal information with co-workers and talk only about work.

These results are not particularly shocking but they are encouraging. Most of us are social creatures and so it only makes sense that we would try to make connections with the people we spend 40 hours a week with. It is encouraging to see that most of the people who responded to our survey have found the opportunity within their workplaces to make those connections.

Were you surprised by the results?