Work relationships

Work relationships can vary from 'role-to-role', eg professional (people behave formally with each other), to 'person-to-person', eg personal (people are friends). In the former you don't know much about the person as an individual while with the latter you know much more.

Another way of looking at this is the question: How much of yourselves are you willing to bring work?

The benefits of work colleagues being friends are

- the more skills are available

- encourages diversity

- improves work relationships as well as better productivity and satisfaction plus enhancing enjoyment with work interactions

- greater positivity with increased exchange of direct and honest feedback

- increasing work satisfaction, ie even unavoidable, routine work can become more satisfying

- engage in activities together outside work

(source: Bob Dick, 2021a & b)

"...it appears that their affection for each other overcame the expected negative impacts of the work itself..."

Bob Dick, 2021b