By Kathleen Newman-Bremang, Refinery29
We spend more time with them than our *real* friends. We count on
them for support and coffee runs and Slack chats. Having them makes us
happier, healthier, and more successful... This week, Refinery29
celebrates Work Friends — the surprising benefits (and occasional
complications) of professional friendship. Plus, the Canadian
BFFs/business partners who are kicking butt right now.
I’ll never forget our meet-cute.
She was wearing suspenders. I was rocking a bob weave like
"Umbrella"-era Rihanna. I was two-weeks into my gig as a production
assistant at a national music station, and I was escorting a VJ hopeful
to the biggest audition of her life. We were both nervous newbies
walking through the halls of our dream career
destination. We didn’t know it on that walk, but the two of us would
become best friends, “work wives” if you will, and carry each other
through the highs (backstage chats with Lady Gaga, getting paid to talk
about music, dancing at our desks) and the lows (general pre-live TV
anxiety, horrible bosses, the impending end of music television) of our jobs for years to come. Think Jane, Sutton, and Kat of The Bold Type but with less glamour and more grinding.
Like The Bold Type,
we were a group of women (and a few men) in our early 20s working in
the trenches of a dying medium whose relationships extended beyond our
proverbial cubicle walls. The weekdays (and sometimes weekends) of
whispered venting, knowing glances, and advice-giving made our
entry-level jobs more bearable and definitely more fun. We were allies,
confidants and partners in ambition. It felt like success.
The average Canadian spends at least 40 hours a week
at work (back then it was more like 50 to 60 for us), and work
friendships are necessary to making that time enjoyable — and even more
productive. According to stats and experts, having a business BFF makes
you better at your job and is essential for a healthy work environment. A
global study by Workplace Trends
in 2018 found that 60% of employees surveyed in 10 countries say they
would be more inclined to stay with their company longer if they had
more friends. And two-thirds of women say socializing is a "major reason" why they work.
“Many
of us are spending more time with our work families than our home
families,” says Dr. Joti Samra, a Vancouver-based psychologist and the
founder of My Workplace Health,
a national online resource for job mental health and safety. Samra says
studies show that Canadians who have friends at work are 27% more
likely to report that they feel that their job is important and that
they are the happiest when they are socializing at work. “We can go
through tremendous adversity, stress, trauma [at work] but if we have
strong social supports, we can not only survive but thrive,” she says.
We
can go through tremendous adversity, stress, trauma [at work], but if
we have strong social supports, we can not only survive but thrive.
That’s
the case for Tim Chan, a Canadian editor based in L.A., who emailed me
after a night out with a colleague. “It helps to have someone who can
relate to your day to day life,” he wrote. “My partner might be
supportive, but if he's not working alongside me or if he doesn't 'get'
my job, it's hard for him to really understand what I'm going through.
Having a friend at work gives you someone to bounce ideas off of,
someone to rant to, and above all, someone who can sympathize with your
thoughts and opinions.”
But that kind of connection is something
many millennials are missing out on. (This is shocking to me, a
millennial, whose closest friendships were made through work.) A new
study by Milkround found that 65% of 25- to 34-year-olds find it hard to make professional friendships
and 48% have called in sick to avoid facing an uninviting office
culture. Older generations don’t report experiencing the same struggles.
The lack of these substantial work friendships may be correlated to the
dissatisfaction millennials feel about their professions.
And the more companies rely on digital interaction instead of in-person
communication, the more employees feel lonely and disengaged, according
to the Workplace Trends study.
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