Wall Street Journal article. For me, the article raises questions about the
rise of the freelance worker. If people value friendship and social
connecitvity of "the job", why would they become freelancers, unless they
are forced to through downsizing, etc. It also raises questions about the
uncounted costs of downsizing (in addition to all the other more obvious
uncounted costs of downsizing)
arthur cordell
==========================
Along With Benefits And Pay, Employees Seek Friends on the
Job
02/20/2002
The Wall Street Journal
LIKE HUNDREDS of thousands of U.S. workers, a friend, an
administrative manager for a New York
brokerage firm, has just gone through a corporate
reorganization. Now, she's trying to figure out how to
regain something she lost.
She kept her job, paycheck, benefits and title when her
company moved her function to a different
department. That's not the problem.
What's missing, she says, is her old network of friends.
Over several years, the office mates and field
reps she worked with shared a wealth of memories and
experiences, from the fun of rafting trips to the
fear of being stranded together on Sept. 11 at an off-site
meeting halfway across the continent. "It
works like families," she says of the closeness.
Now, she is feeling sadness. "You lose people who know who
you are when you let your hair down,
when you're not putting on a business face," my friend
says. She expects her output to drop -- not
because she's not trying, but because she doesn't know her
new co-workers well enough to push them
for extra help. It takes at least a year to develop such
bonds, she says.
AS REORGANIZATIONS and layoffs accelerate amid the
recession,
employees are striving to hang onto hard-won networks of
workplace
friends.
The value of human connections at work was underscored by
the
harrowing workplace stories of Sept. 11. Just weeks later,
a random
national survey of 1,000 workers by Aon Consulting's
Loyalty Institute,
Ann Arbor, Mich., found employees' commitment, or desire to
stay with
the same employer, had rocketed to a five-year high from a
five-year low
in March 2001. The third most powerful factor driving that
commitment is
workers' sense of affiliation, or connectedness on the job,
Aon says,
behind safety and security, and pay and perks.
"The change reflects an increase in employees' desire to
be
connected," says Aon's David Stum. "This desire to feel a
part of a
supportive work group . . . has really expanded since
9-11."
While friendships don't appear on balance sheets, they're
showing up
in research on the underpinnings of productivity. In 28
studies of a
total of more than 105,000 employees, the Gallup
Organization found
that, surprisingly, "having a best friend at work" was one
of the 13
employee circumstances most likely to signal a highly
productive
workplace -- right up there with "knowing what's expected
of me" and
"having the materials and equipment I need." The research
is documented
in "First, Break All the Rules," the best-selling book by
Marcus
Buckingham and Curt Coffman.
More important, these workplace ties have human value.
People by
nature crave deep bonds with others near them, a yen rooted
in the
tribal communities of our ancestors, says Kent Bailey, a
professor
emeritus of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University,
Richmond,
Va.
Today, by necessity, more people forge those bonds with
nonrelatives,
says Dr. Bailey, co-author with Susan Ahern of a book on
the topic,
"Family-by-Choice." As people spend more time at work, more
find these
"psychological kin" there.
MANY WORKERS are striving to maintain those ties. David
Liggett, owner
of a Littleton, Colo., marketing firm, never lets more than
two months
pass without see two friends he met 15 years ago on a
previous job. At
work, the trio provided encouragement, critiques of each
other's work
and help on deadline. Though they've been scattered by
layoffs and
mergers, the friendship still yields rich rewards.
His friends helped Mr. Liggett through a sticky time with
a big
client, advising him on how to talk to the chief executive.
When he was
injured, one of the friends helped him get quick treatment
from a
sought-after specialist. When the same friend hesitated to
take a
vacation, Mr. Liggett reassured him that he needed, and
could afford,
the time.
If you're trying to keep a co-worker network alive, don't
assume you
can do it by e-mail, Ms. Ahern cautions. To find time to
meet, she
recommends keeping a time log for a week, to see whether
there are some
activities you could toss, such as TV-watching, in favor of
friends.
It's worth it, she adds. Such bonds are as important to
mental health as
exercise is to physical health. They're one way of infusing
life with
meaning.
Keith Anderson, a Kansas City, Mo., marketing manager, is
part of a
close-knit group of friends who set monthly lunches
together. The group
never parts without assigning one member the job of setting
up the next
get-together.
In my friend's case, she's already reaching out to her
old co-workers.
Even her new boss sees the value; she urged my friend to
keep up ties
with one of them, a field rep whose advice on new-product
rollouts is
always on target. Based on the research, other employers
might benefit
by doing the same.
For workers, the bonds grow richer over time. As Mr.
Liggett's son
prepares to leave college for the world of work, he offers
this advice:
"The most important thing you get from anyplace you work is
the
relationships with people you work with" -- bonds, he adds,
that endure
longer than most jobs.
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