A close call: Making friends at work has pluses and minuses

Kirk Baird

Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2002 | 8:33 a.m.

Author Dr. Jan Yager offers the following tips about befriending co-workers from her book "Friendshifts: The Power of Friendship and How it Shapes Our Lives" (Hannacroix Creek Books, $22.95):

When it comes to interoffice dating, the warning signs are very clear: "Don't get your honey where you make all your money."

When it comes to employee fraternization, however, there aren't any catchy sayings or rhymes cautioning against befriending co-workers.

That's because, in most cases, the benefits of on-the-job bonding far outweigh the negatives, said Dr. Jan Yager, a sociologist who has studied the dynamics of friendships including interoffice since 1980.

The author of several books on the subject of friendship, including "Friendshifts: The Power of Friendship and How it Shapes Our Lives" (Hannacroix Creek Books, $22.95), Yager is also a workplace consultant, who frequently speaks to companies both management and staff about the pros and cons of becoming chummy with co-workers.

She said most companies are keenly aware of the value of employee bonding, both in and outside of the office.

"In general, friendship aids productivity and camaraderie and being a part of team in the workplace," Yager said from her home in Stamford, Conn. "And some workplaces even encourage (employees) to tell other friends about workplace openings, feeling that they'll be less likely to want to leave the job if they have friends."

Getting together with co-workers and hanging out with them after work is one of the benefits Carla Mastrangelo enjoys most about her job.

A photographer at Glamour Shots at Meadows mall, Mastrangelo, 21, said she goes out with workmates a couple of times a week.

"We go to movies, bars, parties ... because this is a creative environment and we work as a team, we kind of become close," she said. "You can't help it."

Besides, Mastrangelo said, "It makes our job more enjoyable when we are ... being that close and doing things together."

However, in the past outside-of-work fraternization has created rifts between other employees, she said.

"We've had co-workers live together to save on rent," Mastrangelo said. "It caused some problems, which led to one of the girls involved in the situation quitting and going to another store."

Know your friends

Yager breaks down friendship into three categories: casual, close and best.

The type of friendship that is least likely to cause problems in the workplace, she said, is casual.

"It'll provide the benefits of the people working together, where they feel liked and appreciated -- two of the key components of friendship -- but their relationship won't be so intimate or confidential that there might be potential conflicts of interests or possible accusations of favoritism among other employees," Yager said.

It's the close and best friendships, she said, "which we associate with exclusivity or intimacy ... unless handled very cautiously and carefully can create problems in the workplace."

Mary Beth Hartleb, human resources director for Citadel Communications of Las Vegas, which owns a chain of radio stations nationwide (though none in Las Vegas), said it comes down to common sense in the workplace.

While she agrees with Yager that it's best for co-workers to keep relationships casual, it's ultimately a judgment call by employees as to how close they care to be with their co-workers.

"When at work, it needs to be a work relationship; after hours it's your own time," Hartleb said.

And for the most part, employers leave it up to employees to determine whom they hang out with either on the job or away, she said.

"Unless it starts invading the work time or affecting job performance ... these days companies realize that they really don't have any control over" employee interaction, she said. "In fact, companies spend a small fortune to do team building and get them out of the work environment so they can find a common ground and common interest."

Work history

The trend of corporations encouraging interoffice friendships marks a shift in big-business philosophy, said Dr. Robert Parker, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas sociology professor.

In the 1980s and through most of the '90s, when "greed was good," the focus of most corporations and employees was on material possessions.

"People were more avaricious than they needed to be," Parker said. "They were looking at jobs as how to get satisfaction with a maxim income."

That created a sort of "free-agent" scenario in the workplace, where employees routinely switched jobs to further their careers. In turn, employees felt an increasing "disconnectedness" between co-workers and management, he said.

"What was the point of being friends with co-workers if you knew you or they were going to leave soon?" Parker said. "And when corporations began relying more and more on part-time help, full-time workers made no effort to get to know them at all. They knew the (part-timers) were only going to be around for a week, a month, maybe six months."

That trend began to change about four years ago, though, with the "simple living movement," when many dollar-driven workers realized there was more to life than material goods, Parker said. Employees began to focus more on family and friends -- both at work and away.

It wasn't long before corporate America took notice of the changing employee ideology and responded by encouraging interoffice friendships through various activities.

"As a company, we do a lot of things outside the workplace, such as charity events, company picnics, volunteer projects, Corporate Challenge, which actually encourage positive relationships among co-workers," said Debra Thompson, human relations manager for AAA Nevada in Las Vegas.

She said employee activities away from work are important, especially since the average worker spends more time on the job than at home.

"These strong personal relationships actually help create loyalty to a company because it makes people feel like they're more than an annual report," Thompson said.

However, she cautioned, it's important to remember there are employees who simply prefer to keep their private lives to themselves.

"There was a company I was working for that had some issues with a bowling team," Thompson said. "They had a really small department and when a new person joined the company, he didn't join (the team). He didn't like to bowl and preferred to go home to his family every night. His co-workers started saying things like, he was too good for them.

"You don't want to put people in that type of situation where they're ostracized for not going out with co-workers and not being a 'a team player.' "

Yager said that for adults, work is the one of the primary places to meet people and make friends.

"Yes, there are concerns about friendship that are specific to the workplace setting, but there also basic issues about friendship that transcend the environment in which the friendship is flourishing," she said.

"And the benefits of workplace friendships far outweigh the concerns that are important to have, but shouldn't negate against it."