Source: theHRDIRECTOR
Date: January 2007

Tom Rath, Global Practice Leader at Gallup, explains why employees who have a best friend at work, are seven times more likely to be emotionally engaged on the job.

• People with friends at work are 96% more likely to be extremely satisfied with their life
• Fewer than one in five people consider their boss to be a close friend, but employees who have a close friendship with their manager are 2.5 times more likely to be satisfied with their job

Unfortunately, according to studies conducted by my colleagues at Gallup, just one quarter of UK workers report having close relationships at work. Those without a best friend at work are a lonely bunch, having just a one in 12 chance of being engaged, which leads to unhappy employees and pulls a company’s bottom line downward. Yet most of us continue to invest in our own development. We try to make ourselves better employees. We strive to be better human beings. Even when we focus on developing another person, as great parents and managers do so well, our emphasis is on the other person as an individual. We simply ignore the importance of developing closer friendships. As a result, millions of people are disengaged in their jobs, marriages, and other close friendships.

Why does this happen? Perhaps it is because of our ‘focus on me’ environment. The vast majority of courses, professional development programmes, and books highlight how to improve yourself. You take courses at school to improve your own ability to read, write, add and subtract. And later, you have the opportunity to spend more time educating yourself in areas you choose. When you enter the workforce, you add to your base of knowledge by participating in training and development programmes designed to make you a better individual employee. Educating oneself is the foundation of our learning systems, and it’s obviously a worthwhile pursuit. But, is it possible that most of  our potential for rapid personal and professional growth lies in developing our friendships?

A few years ago, if you were to ask me if I needed stronger friendships, my answer would have been a resounding no. I already had several strong personal friendships and a couple of good friends at work. Furthermore, I didn’t see why my work and personal circles of friends should cross over - it seemed cleaner to keep them separated. My assumptions were wrong. In hindsight, I had several malnourished friendships. They were by no means starved, but I had spent very little time consciously improving my best friendships. Throughout my life, I had taken my closest relationships for granted. And I hadn’t spent much time trying to develop new ones. Apparently, this is the norm. A 2001 study1 found that even the very loneliest people didn’t realise they needed more social support.

“understand the critical roles friends play”

Once I began to understand the critical roles friends play in my life, based on the eight types of relationships as detailed in the sidebar, it changed my perspective quickly. After thinking about my own situation more consciously, I discovered several vital friendships sneaking beneath my radar: friends from college who always opened my mind to new ideas or political views; a few people I did not talk to frequently, but who were always there to give me great advice when it mattered; a couple of ‘fun’ buddies who turned out to be great ‘energizers’ in my life; several ‘collaborators’ who were emerging friends; and even a few family bonds, the vitality of which I had seriously underestimated. Another eye opener was that I needed to find a few ‘connectors’ to help me crawl out of my social cave every once in a while.

As I started to describe to my friends what they bring to my life, I found that doing so lifted their spirits even more than my own. Later, I experienced a similar sense of pride as others explained the vital roles I play in their lives. Each one of these conversations was a critical moment in our relationship, as it honed in on the strong points of our friendship and gave us crystal-clear expectations of each other. Following my own exploration, it was easy to see how having vital friendships at work could also boost a company’s profits quickly. The closer the relationship, the more rapidly things get done. When you talk to a good friend at work, it often takes just moments to convey a message that might take hours to help a stranger comprehend. In fact, as I listened to workplace buddies talk, they often spoke in their own code that others could not understand.

Organisational leaders who discourage employees from getting too close on the job may be in for a rude awakening. Over the past ten years, my colleagues at Gallup have surveyed more than ten million people in over 100 countries on the topic of workplace friendships. Along with this data, we have also looked at the related productivity, customer engagement and safety measures for more than 300,000 business units. In short, we find that as people have stronger friendships at work, all of these numbers substantially increase as well.

Although some businesses are warming up to the idea of workplace friendships, there is still a strong resistance to them. Nearly one third of the managers and leaders we interviewed agreed with the statement “Familiarity breeds contempt”. This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has ever worked in a large bureaucratic organisation. And apparently,  several major retailers have formal policies in place that prohibit managers and their employees from having friendships that extend beyond the workplace - and even post these regulations in their stores and provide free-phone numbers for reporting violators. Such policies are more common than I had ever expected. Even if friendships are not actively discouraged, rarely does an organisation’s leadership encourage them.

There are real risks, however, when it comes to workplace friendships. A close friendship is inherently more complex than a superficial one. When people form tightknit social groups at work, it can alienate others, who might become jealous and complain of cliques. And the closer two people get in the workplace, the more potential  fallout if things go awry. The situation gets even more complicated when friendships turn romantic, especially if one party in the relationship is in a position of authority.

So it’s important to recognise the potentially negative consequences of some workplace friendships. That being said, the potential upside of friendships at work could dramatically outweigh the possible disadvantages. New studies2 suggest that close friendships at work lead to substantial increases - not decreases - in job satisfaction and career success. Assuming that friendships are good for business, this poses a serious challenge. As one executive told me, “I can’t just tell my people to make best friends”. And another sarcastically commented, “Should I force them to go out and have a beer together?” They’re right; these approaches would not work and might even seem a bit disturbing. But our research shows that organisations can help employees build friendships on the job, primarily by creating the right climate and environment.

“informal social gathering places”

At one major electronics retailer, they went as far as redesigning their corporate headquarters to model an airport terminal to help employees socialise and congregate. In addition to having café tables, on-site childcare, dry cleaning and healthcare, the only coffee shop (for more than 8,000 employees) sits in the middle of a massive connecting hub, which results in hundreds of additional conversations each day. While this may be an extreme example, other companies create informal social gathering places, which could triple employees’ chances of having friends on the job, according to Gallup’s research.

Another important ingredient, if you want to build better friendships at work, is to get personal. Members of the most productive work teams I have studied know what is going on in one another’s personal lives, and they often talk about how their workgroup is ‘like a family’. Team members care about one another, listen, share secrets, talk about the latest news, have heated arguments, are sometimes jealous of each other, and even cry together. At times, these groups look more like a troubled family, but that’s better than no family at all. According to most experts I have interviewed, social relationships are the single best predictor of our overall happiness in life. So given the fact that we spend the majority of our waking time at work, it might seem obvious that we need closer friendships there. Now, wefinally have the evidence to make this case to our bosses. If any group is in need of more cohesive relationships in the workplace, it is the often-lonely executives at the top.