{"id":541,"date":"2015-06-11T02:00:37","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T02:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crownworkspace.com\/uk\/work-friend-or-foe\/"},"modified":"2023-04-24T13:05:36","modified_gmt":"2023-04-24T13:05:36","slug":"work-friend-or-foe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crownworkspace.com\/uk\/knowledge-base\/work-friend-or-foe\/","title":{"rendered":"Work friend or foe?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On average we spend eight hours a day, five days a week with people from work.<\/h2>\n

Often more time is spent in the workplace with colleagues than at home with family or friends. So it\u2019s important to maintain a good relationship with our colleagues for our well-being.<\/p>\n

A study by Relate in 2014 found that employees are about as likely to have as much daily contact with work colleagues (62%) as they are with own children (64%). Just under half were more likely to have daily contact with their bosses than with their mothers (26%) or friends (16%).<\/p>\n

A major factor in someone\u2019s experience at work is with the people that they work with. Since you spend so much time together it can make or break your experience there .<\/p>\n

An ONS survey asked people if they had a \u2018best friend\u2019 at work, 58% of people said they had at least one close friend at work, and 22% said they have three or more close friends. Interestingly, 42% of respondents said they didn\u2019t count any colleagues as close friends.<\/p>\n

From a employers perspective, the happier we are at work, the better quality of work and more productive we are.<\/p>\n

Robertson Cooper cite workplace relationships as one of the 6 essentials of workplace well-being, which in turn affects business-level outcomes. In fact, their survey of over 40,000 UK employees found that good working relationships are a strong predictor of positive psychological wellbeing.<\/p>\n

Here are a few considerations for employers to enrich their colleagues work lives:<\/p>\n