Hi Arthur,
(AC)
<<<<
Wall Street Journal article [see below]. 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)
>>>>
Yes, there's no doubt about the importance of the friendships that arise in
places of work, both for the individuals involved and for the morale of the
company that employs them. If you like, it's a junior partner of the larger
networking effect that operates in specialist areas of cities leading to
the sort of 'clustering' of similar firms that we see, for example, in the
case of financial services in London and New York. Clustering obviously has
advantages for employers in hiring more staff but also it enables
friendships to continue when people move jobs to another firms which
perhaps are only just round the corner.
Also, it should be mentioned that such social groupings are of tremendous
importance in the matter of innovation. The severe decline of the large
textile industry in my home town of Coventry at the end of the 19th century
threw hundreds of skilled engineers out of work, just at the time when cars
were being experimented with. From about 1900 to 1940 at least 100 new
firms were started making cars, motor bikes, and planes -- asome of them
very weird indeed! Most of them failed but the engineers concerned
reshuffled their friendships, recombining into new small groups. By the end
of WW2, there were about a dozen major firms in these new industries.
However, I think it's much too early to say that distance-friendships and
working arrangements between people working from home are not going to be
fruitful or, indeed, perhaps a significant feature of the world of work in
the coming years. One of the largest software firms in England was started
by women working from home.
In my own firm, Handlo Music, colleagues live and work in half-a-dozen
different countries. Hardly any of us have met one another since we started
almost five years ago. Trust and friendships take longer to mature, of
course, but they're real, nevertheless. (Indeed, I started the business
mainly for the reason of testing this idea of distance-working after taking
part in much discussion about this on FW list in those early euphoric days.
I didn't need any extra income and I'd rather not have had to spend my time
on it. But it's given me and my colleagues the experience which few others
have had, and I think we can say with some confidence that this type of
business is workable. I haven't come across any other 'pure' distance-firms
on the Net so far but there must be others and I'm sure there'll be many
more to come.)
So don't write-off the freelancer or the distance-firm just yet!
Keith
<<<<
ALONG WITH BENEFITS AND PAY, EMPLOYEES SEEK FREINDS ON THE JOB
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 theharrowing
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.
>>>>
� The Wall Street Journal 02/20/2002
__________________________________________________________
�Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in
order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow
_________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
_________________________________________________
