Are you familiar with this? – Employees don’t quit their job, they quit their managers.
Managers take the responsibility to create a culture where employees can help foster friendships and build an effective team. The work environment would be positive and engaging if we just had some friends to share it with. We are aware that there are a lot of benefits of being friendly towards others throughout our lives. Like from school age we are taught to be nice towards others, to get along with those at school, and maybe even heard of a quote like ‘if you can’t say anything nice, better not say anything at all’.
It’s the same with the grownups at work. New employees joining a company just want to fit in, because of work friendships matter. They want to make a good impression and stir away from any bitterness that could occur.
Friend or Organization?
Employees of an organization spend most of their life at work, so creating a good environment for ourselves and others would reduce a lot of problems of dissatisfaction and demotivation throughout the workforce. This tells a lot about the effects coworkers can have on your job satisfaction.
Even though there can be some hostility and distance between colleagues, there is always some healthy and friendly competition. Be a friend who encourages someone at work, praises them for their hard work, help them commit to quality, and talk about their progress. When you have a close friend at work, you would feel a stronger connection with the company and easily attach your views to the company’s purpose and contribute better to create success for the business.
There are certain benefits of being friendly at your workplace according to Forbes,
- It creates a positive environment within a team and helps employees feel comfortable sharing their experiences, ideas, and skills because they feel appreciated and trusted.
- It sparks creativity and brings in a lot of enthusiasm for projects.
- Problem-solving can also happen faster because employees would contribute to providing effective solutions if something goes wrong.
- It gives way for communication and collaboration and increases morale, productivity, and effectiveness of the work team.
- It can even benefit to train and teach employees certain skills if they share collective knowledge for the group’s advantage.
What do the studies say?
According to a 20-year long study by researchers from Tel Aviv University tracking 820 adults between ages 25 and 65 years shows that employees with little or no pure social support in the workplace were 2.4 times more likely to die. Similar studies found that co-workers were a bigger source of stress than a manager or a boss.
According to a study published in the Journal of Organisational Behaviour by Baylor University in 2011, employees who experience frustration over a rude colleague end up spilling negative emotions at home. The ripple effect causes unnecessary stress that doesn’t belong at home and troubles the family.
Worker’s Mental Health Improves
Imagine an environment where everyone is friendly with each other. It would have a huge effect on the team leading to them feeling positive and more satisfied with their jobs. Employees feel highly motivated to work harder and be more engaged in that environment. If your friends are at work with YOU, wouldn’t you want to come to work every day? Having friends at work can make you feel happier in your job and less stressed about coming to work every day. It would create a supportive network with healthier and happier workers, which directly increases the company’s productivity. The supportive network provides a sense of trust throughout all employees who can rely on each other to share their concerns, worries, and workload without worrying about judgment, hostility, or discomfort. It helps in the growth of individuals providing better quality work and enables operations to run smoothly.
As everything mentioned above increases your satisfaction at your job, you would be happier during your work hours and treat everyone nicely. In turn, your colleagues would feel nicer and the chain goes on. Happy and satisfied employees are more motivated, most successful, more effective, show better mental health, and express lesser stress while providing high-quality work benefiting the company and its turnover.
Some ideas to be friendly to your coworkers taken from Psychologist Ron Friedman’s book ‘The Best Place to Work’ :
Don’t hesitate to make friends at your job. humans need to feel a sense of belonging, mainly where they spend so much time, the workplace. These are some ideas that you can use to create friendliness within your workplace:
- Treat everyone with respect and show them that you value their opinions, ideas, and concerns.
- Be an active listener while they are sharing their thoughts and ideas. Be a better support system to help them get through work and even personal life problems.
- Connect with your co-workers on a personal level and promote friendly relationships even outside the workplace.
- Try to find something in common with a coworker that you could share like music, food or TV shows that you can both enjoy. Being honest and open will show them that you are making efforts and you would be reciprocated.
- Sitting in your own cubicle can get very lonely, making you lose motivation. Playing sports or doing group activities can also help relieve work stress and give opportunities for co-workers to know each other.
- Celebrate the achievements of each individual to promote a sense of cohesiveness and friendliness in your team which would motivate everyone to work harder. Provide constant feedback as a friend and give them space to support or criticize you in the same way.
Healthy strong boundaries are also essential. If there is a difference in authority, some ground rules about the relationship must be set, so there is fairness in leadership and management and no bias or preferential treatment to the friend. Discussions or gossiping about other employees is also frowned upon as it impacts the effectiveness of the workers.
There are some disadvantages to having friendships at work according to Forbes,
- Close friendships can disrupt the balance in teams. Other members can feel left out or jealous.
- Affinity towards a friend can lead you to misjudge their performance, leading to preferential treatment.
- If the friendship breaks, both the members of the friendship are going to get affected making it hard to work with them.
- Some individuals are unable to deal with the conflict logically and might end up punishing the friend, like damage their reputation or even affect their work.
So the option is left to you, for forming meaningful connections with your colleagues to make the job bearable and your work life better, trying not to overstep and maybe ending up making frenemies in your career.
References:
Baylor University. (2011, August 16). The consequences of co-worker rudeness are far-reaching. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 12, 2020, from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110816114951.html
Shirom, A., Toker, S., Alkaly, Y., Jacobson, O., & Balicer, R. (2011). Work-based predictors of mortality: A 20-year follow-up of healthy employees. Health Psychology, 30(3), 268–275. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023138
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathycaprino/2018/02/18/can-bosses-and-employees-be-friends-outside-of-work/#328d694d4140
Baylor University. (2011, August 16). The consequences of co-worker rudeness are far-reaching. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 12, 2020, from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110816114951.html
Shirom, A., Toker, S., Alkaly, Y., Jacobson, O., & Balicer, R. (2011). Work-based predictors of mortality: A 20-year follow-up of healthy employees. Health Psychology, 30(3), 268–275. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023138
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathycaprino/2018/02/18/can-bosses-and-employees-be-friends-outside-of-work/#328d694d4140
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