During the workweek, we may spend more time with our colleagues than we do our families. That’s a lot of time! Why not enjoy it? We know that our work life is a direct contributor to our overall happiness. What we might not realize is just how important our relationships are at work. Not just professional relationships but real, meaningful relationships built on support and trust.
Whether you have a best friend at work or just strong bonds with your colleagues, it matters. The World Happiness Report 2017 found that the level of support that a worker receives from his or her co-workers is a very strong predictor of all four measures of subjective well being utilized in the study: life satisfaction, job satisfaction, happiness, and positive effect. Those who indicated that they had a best friend at work were seven times more engaged in their jobs compared to those who don’t.

“We discovered that the single best predictor is not what people are doing — but who they are with. It doesn’t even matter if two friends at work are engaged in tasks that are directly related to workplace productivity. According to a study conducted by a team of MIT researchers in which workers wore high-tech identity badges throughout the day that monitored their movements and conversations, idle chit-chat might actually be valuable to productivity. The researchers found that even small increases in social cohesiveness lead to large gains in production.” – Tom Rath and Jim Harter, authors of Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements