Not Motivated By Having A Friend At Work
With employee burnout and resignation levels at (or near) record highs, virtually every company is desperately trying to find ways to engage, retain and motivate their people. For a number of companies and leaders, this means trying to strengthen bonds with and between employees.
We’ve all heard that people want to have friends at work and, if you don’t think about it too hard, that seems pretty reasonable. After all, for many people, their relationships with colleagues have suffered during all the remote and hybrid working. In the study The State Of Working From Home, we learned that 54% of employees say their relationships with work colleagues are better working from an office, about 15% say their relationships are better working from home, and 30% say those relationships are the same regardless of location.
But while relationships with work colleagues have suffered, personal relationships with friends, family, spouses, children, etc., are considerably better working from home. In the aforementioned study, we discovered that 57% of employees say their personal relationships are better working from home, 17% say their personal relationships are better working in an office, and 26% say those relationships are the same regardless of location.
This presents leaders with a bit of a conundrum: Is it more important for employees to have better relationships with their work colleagues or with their friends, family, spouses, children, etc.? Which improved relationship is more likely to reduce an employee’s burnout?
That’s only the starting point, however, because when it comes to relationships with work colleagues, only about a third of employees even find that a significant motivator.
Through the online test, What Motivates You At Work?, we’ve discovered that there are five major drives that motivate people at work; Affiliation, Achievement, Power, Security and Adventure.
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Those employees with a high Affiliation drive want collaboration and friendly relationships with their work colleagues. They’ll often be well-liked with broad networks of colleagues throughout the company and on their team. As you might imagine, these are the people who will most benefit from having friends at work, but currently, according to the data from the test, they’re only about 32% of people.
Imagine, however, that we’re instead dealing with someone whose primary motivational drive is Power. They’re going to be far more driven by being able to take a leadership role and direct others. They’re motivated by being in charge of individuals and groups and having the opportunity to advise and influence others. That does not sound like someone for whom having a close personal friend at work is going to make much of an impact.
The point of all this is simply that while we’re trying to find ways to engage and retain people amidst mass burnout and resignations, set the myths and cliches aside. Perhaps your folks have experienced a decline in their work relationships, but if they’ve experienced big boosts to their personal relationships, do the friends at work matter that much? And even if you’re still concerned about a precipitous decline in work relationships, we need to ask whether that’s something that even motivates employees. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer here, but there are many one-size-fits-one solutions.
