When your colleague is your friend, it improves efficiency

Recent surveys have found that there are on-the-job performance benefits when co-workers are friends outside the office. A majority of executives (57%) and workers (63%) agreed that productivity improves when co-workers are buddies off the job as well as on, although employees think it has more of an effect than do senior executives (22% vs 2%, respectively).

That’s the finding from responses of 150 senior executives with the nation’s 1,000 largest companies and from 519 full- or part-time workers in an telephone survey conducted by California-based temping firm, Accountemps. “Colleagues who are friends are more likely to support one another when presented with challenges or new responsibilities, enhancing workflow and team spirit,”

Accountemps chairman Max Messmer said. “Supervisors can increase camaraderie by sponsoring team-building events and giving staff members the opportunity to get to know each other outside of an office setting,” added the author of Motivating Employees for Dummies. While there used to be a taboo about working with friends, workers from Generation Y “want the office to be a place where their life is being lived out,” said Eric Chester in a Society for Human Resource Management Online Diversity Focus Area report.

Source: shrm.org