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While we say we love our partners, families, and friends, the people that we spend most of our waking hours with are our coworkers. Depending on your job, you may even eat breakfast, lunch, and even dinner with these people five days a week. By virtue of the situation, it would seem like you automatically have a new social network built-in. It is kind of like school when you were a kid. You spend all day with these people, naturally you'd make some friends, right?
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Comments
06.15.09
Our generation seems to be more open to sharing personal information than generations past. Look at Facebook for example. Because of this, personal relationships at work are common. The separation between work and life are blurrier than ever. Is this a problem? I don't necessarily think so. Because networking is huge these days, having relatively close relationships at work is probably a good thing in the long run. However, every action has a reaction. When personal friendships go bad at work, getting work done may be a little more difficult.
06.15.09
I have a very close friend at work but our relationship rarely leaves the office. I do see that as Jason points out Gen Y is way more comfy with sharing info and I also think that we are not so quick to judge. We know the difference between personal & professional and its the personal that forms the relationships, more so than the professional. I also notice that its just automatic. The one thing that I do is not treat everyone equal. The jokes I make with one co-worker may not work with another. So its all about tailoring things based on each person's personality. And like in school, its best to just make nice, even when you don't want to.
06.15.09
This is very interesting. I agree that work friendships are important, and can make our work days better. You're right that we have to be careful not to let these friendships interfere with our work, but I don't think that necessarily has to mean not sharing our personal lives with work friends. Yes, there should most definitely be a line, but I think the extent to which we need to hold back depends on the people involved. Like you said, it isn't an either/or situation, and there are ways to combine.
06.15.09
Jennifer this is a very interesting point you bring up. I think regardless of your generation that it's important to feel at least amicable with most of the people you work with. Like you said, it's usually about 40-70 hours a week you're spending with these people...way more than you see your family or friends weekly.
I think for Generation Y, where we care about the company culture and ambiance in our workspace that this goes hand-in-hand with work friendships. My current and first post-college job has amounted to amazing friendships with my co workers. We see each other even after work and can talk about our lives outside of work, even while we're at work. Caring about another and enjoying spending time together has made work so enjoyable (on top of how I actually enjoy the job). Sometimes I think it's worse to work with people you despise versus a job you despise. It just depends but to me, the people are very important and always make the time and place.
06.15.09
Interesting post. As an entrepreneur, I've only had 1-2 partners at a time, so it almost necessitated becoming friends with my co-workers. One of the only drawbacks that I've found is the lack of co-workers in small startups. Many people make friends at work, but people in small startups do not have a similar relationships until they grow their companies.
06.16.09
Actually, according to a great workplace study done by Gallup, having a good friend at work predicts how productive the employee will be and how long they will remain at that job. The overall study focused on how to engage employees and this 'friendship effect' is seen across all generations. Among the 250 variables that the Gallup study tested, having a friend ranked in the top ten for predicting the engagement level of an employee.
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