This article is more than 1 year old

Like working at IBM? Let Big Blue do the matchmaking

And, er, don't use those nasty apps

IBM is running a dating service for staff in China in a bid to ensure employees stay with the company, according to reports.

Corporate singles events co-hosted with other companies are already common practice at domestic IT firms such as search engine Baidu, reported the Financial Times.

As if in some weird Bizarro World, IT engineers are often seen as attractive partners (due to their good salaries and government perks if nothing else).

Meanwhile, companies benefit from the link between marital status and staff retention, as the country's growing IT sector is creating a fast turnover of in-demand techies, said the paper.

Summer Zhang, who co-ordinates club activities at IBM in Beijing told the FT: “Most engineers are shy, and they find dating a little hard. So we hold these activities to help them."

Earlier this week IBM warned of the security perils of sex scheduling software on mobile devices.

Big Blue said it studied 41 different hookup apps, and claims it found that more than 60 per cent contained vulnerabilities that could be exploited by an attackers.

Cynics might draw a link between the warnings in the report and broader push to bring all its employee dating in-house. But then it seems in other parts of the world, the company can't get rid of its staff quick enough. ®

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