If you work at least 40 hours a week, chances are, you spend more time with your colleagues than your friends and family each week. So it’s worth creating good work relationships. In fact, a 2014 Globoforce survey found that people with workplace friendships are nearly three times more likely to say that they love their companies and two times less likely to be poached by another company.
But before you start becoming BFFs with everyone within cubicle’s reach, it’s important to remember that work friends come with conditions—and need to be treated with more discretion than non-work friends.
“Although the boundary is easily blurred, work friends are colleagues first and friends second,” says Jessica Methot, an associate professor of Human Resource Management at Rutgers University. “Unlike friendships outside the workplace, work friendships uniquely occur on the backdrop of the formal organization, and it is key to prioritize professionalism.”
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