Best friends make strong partnership
By Del Jones
USA Today
Silvia Amaro and Vivian Derr went to work at a health maintenance organization in Santa Ana, Calif., in the late 1970s and have been best friends ever since.
Not good friends. Not close friends. They are among the 29 percent of employees who say they have a best friend at work, and mounting research indicates that the word "best" makes the difference.
Amaro and Derr have a combined 84 years of nursing experience and now manage a fleet of vans that provide healthcare at schools in low-income pockets of Orange County.
"I was ready to retire five years ago, but I'm still here, and the one reason is ... Sylvia," Derr says.
Best friendships are good for business. Companies are coming to discover that, yet are at a loss at what to do about it. Group-hug Tuesdays? Sends chills down managers' spines. Diversity proponents worry that they have made too many strides to see it all disintegrate into the office version of high school cliques.
Yet it's widely accepted that the winning companies during the next generation will be those that have employees eager to come to work and bring with them their hearts, minds, creativity and passion.
That kind of worker has been coined in management-speak as "engaged," and an industry has sprouted around the elusive quest to find them, convert them and prevent them from slipping into the ranks of the "disengaged" — or worse, the "actively disengaged."
The Gallup Organization has surveyed 5 million workers over 35 years searching for what magic makes some engaged and others not. Much of what it found is not surprising.
For example, engaged workers are more likely to receive regular praise and are given an opportunity to do what they do best every day. But what Gallup has uncovered about best friends stands out as novel:
• Among the three in 10 workers who strongly agree they have a best friend at work, 56 percent are engaged, 33 percent are not engaged and 11 percent are actively disengaged to the point of poisoning the atmosphere with their negativity.
• Among the seven in 10 who do not strongly agree that they have a best friend at work, 8 percent are engaged, 63 percent are not engaged and 29 percent are actively disengaged.
In a separate study of 161 employees of an unnamed large telecommunications company near San Francisco, Columbia University organizational behavior associate professor Francis Flynn found that workers who do a lot of favors for each other are more productive than those who focus strictly on their own jobs.
Favors must be a two-way street, however. Those who do a lot of favors for each other are more productive, but not those who do favors but get little in return. Small favors that are reciprocated build trust that leads to an exchange of bigger favors, Flynn says.
Board one Continental jet and the flight attendants will all be in their 20s. Take another, and they'll all be in their 50s. Continental makes no effort at homogeneity but gives flight attendants flexibility in choosing their schedules. Flight attendants use a "buddy bid," says Sam Risoli, vice president in charge of Continental's 8,650 flight attendants. Many bid to work the same section of the aircraft.
Tiffany Guarnaccia and Julie Berezin, both 24, work at the pay-per-click advertising firm Searchfeed.com in Bridgewater, N.J. When Guarnaccia was preparing for a trade show two months ago and about to miss a deadline, best friend Berezin pitched in with a late night. The business world is cutthroat, Guarnaccia says, and too many co-workers enjoy watching you flounder — especially when a promotion is on the line.
In Guarnaccia's mind, a best friend is someone who wants you to succeed.
Most workers say, "A best friend has my back," says Marcus Buckingham, formerly with Gallup and co-author of the best-seller "First, Break All the Rules."
Researchers such as Flynn prefer the word "trust," but he suspects trust and friendship are nearly identical.
Gallup says best friendships by themselves do nothing to turn around a noxious workplace. Best friends at a company where opinions aren't valued would be more likely to unionize, says Gallup consultant Curt Coffman and co-author of "First, Break All the Rules."
But in an otherwise healthy environment, best friends often come to the aid of the company and tell each other to "just get over it when things suck at work," says Mandy Jezin, whose best friend is Angela Zappella at DGWB Advertising.
Companies can't force workers to be best friends. But some try to be a conduit by giving co-workers a glimpse into each other's values and interests. Many companies sponsor charitable projects that bring like-minded co-workers together. Engineers at one company begin meetings with everyone sharing something personal, Buckingham says.
Brian Le Gette, CEO of Baltimore company 180s, is a believer in workplace friendships. The maker of sunglasses, ear warmers and gloves has a young, active workforce, and the company sponsors employees in Frisbee golf tournaments and a charitable rowing competition that had 22 co-workers practicing for long hours after work.
Coffman encourages such attempts, but he says companies get more mileage hiring "connectors," or people who say at job interviews that they have dozens of best friends.
"It's like throwing a great party. If you invite a bunch of boring people, they're not going to dance," Coffman says.
