As the cost of living continues to creep steadily higher, millions of Average Joes and Joannas across the globe are being forced to trade in a night in the pub for an extra couple of hours at their desk simply in order to keep their heads above water.

Inevitably, the much-hyped 'work-life' balance is likely to be the first casualty of the credit crunch as hard-pushed working mothers and fathers struggle to enjoy a healthy home life while simultaneously paying the bills and clocking up the extra hours needed to persuade the boss that they should be spared in the next round of redundancies.

However, as everybody always says, every cloud has a silver lining, and indeed the global economic crisis could well prove to serve as something of an aphrodisiac for many professional singletons, offering conditions just as favourable as internet dating or other such services.

Put simply, extra hours over a spreadsheet or photocopier and the camaraderie forged by the mounting workplace pressures can often serve to bring people closer together and, when it is taken into account that a great deal of dating initially blossoms in such an environment, some may be hoping that the downturn continues for some time yet, for the sake of their love lives.

Serendipitously, at the same time as colleagues are being brought together by the tumbling stock markets, general attitudes to workplace dating are seemingly being relaxed, with employers perhaps keen to keep morale up in such circumstances.

According to romance experts, Stephanie Losee and Helaine Olen, whose 'Employee Handbook for Finding – and Managing – Romance of the Job' is currently taking the bestseller charts by storm, fewer than five per cent of HR professionals believe relationships between co-workers should be banned.

Indeed, while the US once led the way in stamping down on such romances, the majority of bosses are now developing a different approach.

"For companies, it is becoming more a matter of how to manage dating and romance in the workplace and less of a matter of preventing it from happening," Ms Olen noted in an interview with Reuters.
However, this hardly gives loved-up workers the right to romance one another under the eyes of their stressed-out colleague.

Instead, common sense should continue to prevail and, however hard it may be, a little restraint may go a long way, both in terms of one's relationship and one's career.

"You may have met your mate at work, but you should not conduct your romance at work," she added.

Whether employers like it or not, as work patterns change, their workforce are going to become increasingly close and, as such, they need to adapt accordingly.

"Office dating works," Ms Losee concluded.

"And that's why people keep doing it."