What if I don't want a BFF at work?
Summary
Workplace friendships have value for businesses, and arguably for employees as well. But it should also be perfectly OK, if employees wish to keep work and friendships separate.
In the last few weeks, I’ve heard some leaders complain about how remote teams have fewer “lasting friendships” and poorer team bonding. From their perspective, this could have long-term repercussions on company culture. While I appreciate these concerns come from good intentions, I struggle to rein in my cynicism about friendships in the workplace.
Before I go any further into this article, let me make some disclosures. I’ve been at my employers for 16 years now. Admittedly, I’ve made a few close friends here during this time. I even met my wife at this company! So I’m not opposed to the idea of friendship at the workplace. I also know that there are business benefits when people have friends at work. To some extent, it’s common sense - you’re likely to give your work a harder crack when you’re in it with your friends.
My cynicism is despite my experiences. For one, I find the “come, be friends” encouragement, rather paternalistic. Companies employ adults who can think for themselves. The pandemic taught many of us the value of family and the relationships we have outside work. Some people choose to give more time to those relationships, instead of relying on the workplace as a place to find friends. And that’s ok. Jobs are temporary, even by my standards of employee loyalty. The decisions people make about who they want to be friends with are more permanent. Employers needn’t tell people who they should be friends with. Our parents did that when we were kids, and most of us hated their advice.
Second, sometimes friendship and work don’t mix. I remember a time when I could have become my then-girlfriend-now-wife’s reporting manager. I brought up the conflict of interest and we ended up working separately. But friendship is a bit more dodgy. If your friend is your colleague and they’re screwing up, it’s hard for you to be objective about it. How fair can a manager be, if one of their direct reports is a friend and the other isn’t?
And third, my dubiety also comes from what we’ve observed during the recent spate of layoffs. It’s been brutal! Many companies laid people off, not because they had an existential crisis. Examine their books and you’ll notice that they’re not just profitable, but they’re also sitting on big cash reserves. For them, it was a cynical business decision to fire people in what was “layoff season”. It’s not as if having friends at work would have given any employees immunity from the layoffs! With that backdrop, when leaders encourage employees to have friends at work, I certainly wouldn’t fault employees who’ll ask, “But why?”.
Now before you dismiss me as being overly cynical, let me offer some anecdotal evidence to support my perspective. Companies always act in self-interest. Employee well-being is secondary to other, more conventional measures of business success - things like growth, P&L and share price. Here’s a telling graphic from a big tech firm. On the left-hand side, you see their falling employer ratings on Glassdoor. On the right-hand side, you see their rising share price for approximately the same duration.
Employee happiness can often be a casualty of calculative business decisions
Call it a coincidence if you will. I’ll leave you to draw your conclusions from these graphs.
It’s not that we don’t need healthy, work relationships with our colleagues. We spend at least a third of our time at work and a lot of our remaining time thinking about it. Yes, those relationships are important and I’ll spend some time on this subject in next week’s post. But all things considered, if an employee says, “Sorry, I’ll keep work and friendship separate.”; maybe, just maybe - companies should respect that sentiment.