Research Shows Work Friendships Are Vitally Important, Here’s Why
A recent study by Doctor Robert Waldinger revealed that people who had a good work friendships performed their jobs better.
The relationship with our jobs changed dramatically due to the global pandemic. It created a more flexible model by allowing people to work from home. But it also blurred the boundaries between office hours and our personal lives. And, somewhere between those extremes, people lost the ability to form meaningful human connections like work friendships.
According to Doctor Robert Waldinger, a professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, work friendships have always been vital to career success. He explored the findings in a new book called, The Good Life which he wrote with Marc Schulz. The research was conducted over 85 years and followed people from their teens to adulthood.
Over the years, the long-running process assessed factors that lead to health and well-being. The big takeaway was that people who had the warmest work friendships were happier, stayed healthier longer, and they lived longer. “We get little hits of well-being from all kinds of relationships, from friends, family, work colleagues,” Waldinger via NPR.
While the study found that romantic partners, siblings, and friends are important, it also found that work friendships are also significant. “All of that seems to affirm our need for belonging,” Waldinger continued. “That we are seen and recognized by others, even the most casual contact.” Since people spend a lot of time at work, those bonds make a real difference.
Unfortunately, the lack of work friendships is becoming a growing problem. A poll by Gallup recently found that only 32 percent of workers are engaged in their jobs, compared to 36 percent in 2020. The survey (via NPR) also found that the number of actively disengaged employees has risen since the pandemic.
Another Gallup poll found that only two in ten American workers have a “work best friend, which is someone you can confide in about your personal life. For people under the age of 35, those numbers dropped by three percentage points since 2019. The 20% with good work friendships performed their jobs better.
“They were much less likely to leave their job for another one because they had a friend at work,” Waldinger said of the work friendships study. The research also indicates that having a close friend at work has become even more important since the pandemic due to the rise in hybrid and remote work which can become rather isolating.
Since feeling connected to colleagues is a precious resource, building a sense of warmth and connection is essential. Start with tiny steps like sending a colleague a text or email just to make small talk. It only takes a few seconds, but those actions often bring us little doses of happiness and can lead to more meaningful work friendships.
“More often than not, you will find that something very positive comes back,” Waldinger explains. Leaning into curiosity about your co-workers is also a great way to build work friendships. For instance, asking someone about a photo on their desk serves as a conversation starter that doesn’t relate to the job.
“When we are curious about someone in a friendly way, it’s flattering and it engages people in conversation,” Waldinger said about creating work friendships. These seemingly insignificant conversations bring big and ongoing benefits to our well-being.
