Encouraging close friendships.

[Janet Clark]

Research indicates that employees are more engaged if their employer encourages friendships at work. Has anyone had sucess in encouraging friendships in the workplace and how have they done this?

[Marilyn Leccese]

Hello Janet,
I find your question a good one as "best friend at work" is the question on which we regularly receive the lowest scores.

I've had some discussions with managers about what does a best friend at work mean and what does that relationship look like. I think people often think about it in the same way that they think about best friends "outside of work" and to me it seems that the expectations for that relationship might be somewhat different.

Just some thoughts -- don't think that I've really provided any answers to your question.
Marilyn

[Michael Gibbs]

I have seen the benefits of having friends at work first-hand. We talk a lot about how the organization frustrates employees and drives them away (something that my employer does occasionally as well) but one of the biggest reasons that I come to work every morning is that I love working with the people that I work with. All of them bring unique things to work and are great people to be around. I don't have as much chance as I used to to hang out with them outside of work, but we could all hang out and have just as good a time at a cookout or a baseball game as we do at work.

I think that the value of that in terms of engagement is immense. Once employees establish deeper relationships like that, it makes several aspects of work easier...it makes brainstorming easier, it makes meetings more enjoyable, and just helps create a workplace that employees want to be a part of.

[David Zinger]

Janet:
Your question about creating/encouraging friendship at work has left me thinking a lot about this. I know a close friend at work kept me sane, kept me engaged, and helped keep stress under control. We found each other.

This opens up the question to me: can we create friendships at work.

This seems kind of artificial to me (of course I would rather find a mentor that be assigned a mentor) but I do think we can invite friendships at work and set up the conditions for them to occur more often.

I think a social network like this has helped me develop some closer ties with network members.

Here are some interesting statistics from Tom Rath and his work on friendship through Gallup.:

Only 1 in 5 employees devote some time to develop friendships at work.
Without a best friend at work, the chances of being engaged in your job are 1 in 12.

Here is a real key:
When managers discuss friendships with employees on a regular basis, it nearly triples the chances of employees having a "best friend at work."