Friendships make work sing

By Rachel Morrison

If your workplace is the sort of place where personal friendships are encouraged to flourish, your staff will be more committed to the company - and less likely to leave.

That has been confirmed by research into workplace friendships by Massey University doctoral student Rachel Morrison, who featured in Career last year.

She has just finished a study of 124 Waitemata District Health Board staff, mostly middle-aged female nurses.

The study asked about the opportunities to develop friendships at work and sought links to factors such as their commitment to the organisation, their job satisfaction, their intention to leave and whether there was any dual-role tension - the dynamic that can arise when one friend is promoted to a higher level than the other, bringing inequality into a formerly equal relationship.

The health board's bosses can be pleased - friendships and informal relationships were important to staff and they were satisfied with this aspect of their work environment.

The findings reinforce the written values - openness, integrity, compassion, respect, and a customer focus - and the team-based philosophy of the organisation, says human resources head Andrew Norton.

"It's always good to have principles like that reinforced."

Morrison says the informal networks within any organisation have a large impact on the way it functions, and describes friendships as "extremely powerful structural units".

The friendliness of a workplace is generally perceived, says Morrison, as something the organisation provides, rather than a more organic thing, and it "correlated strongly with organisational commitment".

Having increased opportunities for friendship because of the nature of the work and the environment has a direct influence on satisfaction and retention, while prevalence of friends - the number of them - does not.

Those with close friendships at work reported increased job satisfaction, increased team cohesion and less intention to leave. Those in tight-knit work groups were also less likely to move on.

Most of those surveyed - 95 per cent - were female, and of that group, 73.6 per cent were 40 and over.

New Zealand Europeans totalled 89.2 per cent and Maori 5 per cent. Four in 10 had been with the board between one and five years.

Staff described many ways in which friendships helped them do their job and made the day more enjoyable, says Morrison.

They used phrases such as "it makes work more pleasant, fun, something to look forward to".

Friendships brought compassion, consideration, debriefing, social support, learning from more experienced colleagues, better communication and practical help.

But staff acknowledged that sometimes friendships could cause problems, saying it was difficult to criticise friends, and the existence of a friendship would sometimes make them more likely to put up with a bad situation.

Those who confessed to a negative relationship - one where there was no rapport - described its impact on their work in strong terms: anger, frustration, discomfort, stress, unhappiness and resentment.

One result surprised Morrison. Those with close friends were less likely to experience dual-role tension, quite the opposite of what she expected to record.

But she says the survey's skew towards middle-aged women influences this. "Middle-aged women are the most skilled at maintaining relationships."

The results, says Morrison, also highlight the importance of managers acknowledging and nurturing "relationship structures".

Those surveyed mentioned open-plan and shared offices as conducive to friendship and others stressed the importance of "being able to take tea breaks together, giving opportunities to catch up and debrief".

Tips for bosses, then? "If you want to improve cohesion, try targeting negative relationships - if they can solve them that will help," says Morrison.

"Most things are related to each other, so if you can target one aspect it will have flow-on effects for the rest.

"Do things like improving opportunities for friendship - informal tea rooms and even things like having Friday night work drinks and work sports teams that give people an opportunity to make friends outside the limits of their job."

Most of us would benefit from a five-minute chin-wag with a colleague every hour or so, says Morrison.

"There are some offices which discourage personal chit-chat, even though there's been research that shows if you do the same thing for more than 45 minutes you're not being productive anyway. So you need a five-minute chat every hour."

pf* Rachel Morrison has a second, nationwide study into friendship at work, and she would like to hear from you. If you would like to take part, the online questionnaire takes 15 to 20 minutes to complete and is at Put 640 in the box "participate in research".

* Email Rachel Morrison