Many people who work outside the home have friends they have made through their work place. Some people only have work friends. Especially if they spend much of their time working.
That being said, there are actually quite a few benefits to making work friends. Benefits you may not have thought of, but ones that can increase your chances of doing well at work, as well as improve your home life.
One of the main benefits of having friends at your work place is it can actually make your job a more fun and more interesting place to be. That is because spending time with your friends at lunch time and on breaks makes your work day just that bit more pleasant, as well as a place you can actually look forward to going to every day. Being able to talk to people who understand why you are upset, angry or happy about things happening at work can also prevent stress and depression. After all, while a family member may be more than willing to listen, they rarely understand why you feel the way you do as they do not work at your company. Nor do they know the people involved.
Yet family members also benefit as their loved one will often arrive home at the end of the day much happier than if they were working at a company where they did not have close relationships with anyone.
Another benefit of making work friends you may never have considered is that of improved productivity being directly related to having close friends at your job. Think about it. Work can be a boring place to go to for many and, if you are working a lot of hours, productivity eventually suffers. Studies show, however, that people who have friends at work tend to find their jobs less boring and, as a consequence, are usually more productive. Some research even shows those people with work friends end up more passionate about their jobs, and more loyal to the companies they work for. It even makes them less likely to quit their jobs as they would hate to leave their friends behind.
Work friends can also be a huge support system for you. Especially if you are having problems at your job, or customer demands are getting you down. Knowing that other people understand what you are going through simply because they work at the same place, and that they want to support you as much as possible, will help you get through difficult situations and deal with them better. Even personal development can be boosted by having friends at work, particularly if you are going through a training course at your job and friends are taking it too. This is due to your friends being able to help you study, as well as work in your group during class exercises.
Having employees with friends at work is also beneficial for the companies themselves. In fact, those employees that have close relationships with people they work with are more likely to work harder and be happier at work, thus leaving management with less problems to deal with.
All of these reasons are why having healthy friendships at work should be encouraged by employers, and why workers should seek out work friends. Especially if they want their companies to be nicer places to work and to be even more successful at what they are trying to achieve. So, instead of just heading straight home at the end of the day, see if any co-workers are up for grabbing a drink or taking up residence at one of the best magnetic dart boards for an evening of healthy competition or gathering in someone’s garage for game of beer pong on a Friday night. The opportunities for making work friends is truly endless.
