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Bullying, pregnancy and affairs among most Googled workplace issues

Bullying, pregnancy and leaving their company are the most common topics UK workers search for when Googling questions about their boss. 

That’s according to research from Viking Direct has revealed, which looked at the most searched for terms around managers, colleagues and workplaces.

It also found that employees are turning to online searches to find out what to do if they fancy a colleague and how to deal with complaints and conflicts with their co-workers.  

One of the top terms with 170 searches per month was โ€œcan my boss watch me on CCTV from homeโ€, while โ€œhow to kill your bossโ€ and โ€œdoes my boss fancy meโ€ both came in at 140 searches a month. 

Blimey.

140 people also searched for โ€œhow to tell your boss youโ€™re pregnantโ€, with 90 workers a month asking, โ€œcan I sue my boss for emotional distressโ€. 

On a slightly less serious note, 10 people every month searched for โ€œdo I have to invite my boss to my weddingโ€.  

Boss searches were encouraging overall though, with 76% of them possessing positive sentiment. 

The top keywords people searched for about their bosses were: 

  1. Bully
  2. Pregnant
  3. Leaving
  4. Raise
  5. Fire
  6. Hate
  7. Romantically
  8. Complain
  9. Affair
  10. Crush
  11. Fancy
  12. Maternity
  13. Notice
  14. Sex

When it came to colleagues, office politics dominated, with โ€œhow to resolve conflict with a colleagueโ€ and โ€œhow to work with a colleague who undermines youโ€ both searched for on 50 occasions a month. Meanwhile, 30 people searched for โ€œcan I refuse to work with a colleagueโ€. 

Surprisingly, UK workers were less positive overall about their colleagues than bosses, with only 59% of searches backed by positive sentiment.  

These were the most common terms employees Googled about colleagues:  

  1. Like
  2. Complaint
  3. Crush
  4. Fancy
  5. Complain
  6. Hate
  7. Conflict
  8. Attract

Viking also measured the sentiment behind searches based around employeesโ€™ thoughts about their work or workplace. Interestingly, this was revealed to have the most negative sentiment, with only 45% positive and 31% negative โ€“ twice as high as that for bosses and colleagues.  

Bob Huibers, Marketing Executive at Viking Direct said: โ€œItโ€™s really interesting to see the wide range of questions that office workers are turning to search engines to find the answers to. While office gossip used to be restricted to the water cooler, it seems weโ€™re eager to ask Google about burgeoning workplace romances.  

โ€œFrom a more serious perspective, there were some more significant and extremely important topics being Googled, showing that UK employees have a greater appetite than ever for improving their HR and employment law knowledge and are likely to avoid the traditional route of speaking to a manager or HR department. With all the resources now available to us online, this can only be seen as a positive, empowering shift.โ€ย 

Image by 377053 from Pixabay