One of the most fun aspects of watching the television show Grey’s Anatomy is keeping track of the web of relationships among the staff at Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital. Workplace friendships, secret crushes, full-fledged romances, and bitter resentments could definitely keep your night interesting! Yet these interactions also interest us as scholars because such peer relationships reveal the importance of peer communication, communication between individuals at the same level of authority in an organization. Researchers, management coaches, and popular magazines warn that Americans are spending more and more time in the workplace, leaving less time for outside personal relationships. Yet we all need friends and confidants. So where do we find them? You guessed it—in the organizations we devote time to, particularly the organizations we work for. Research, however, seems to say some contradictory things about whether or not this phenomenon is healthy.

In a survey of more than five million workers over thirty-five years, 29 percent of employees say that they have a “best friend” at work (Jones, 2004). This statistic matters: out of the approximately three in ten people who state that they have a best friend at work, 56 percent are engaged with, or enjoy, their work, whereas 33 percent are not engaged. Only 11 percent are actively disengaged and negative about their work experience. On the other hand, of the seven in ten workers who do not have a best friend at work, only 8 percent are engaged, whereas 63 percent are not. The remaining third of employees without a workplace best friend are actively disengaged from their work (Gallup, cited in Jones, 2004). These findings have powerful implications for employers: having a workplace best friend makes workers seven times more likely to enjoy their work and consequently be more productive. Perhaps this is the thinking behind organizational initiatives to help employees get to know one another—office picnics, hospital softball teams, and school Frisbee and golf tournaments.

But there’s also a potential downside to these workplace intimacies. One is that the relationships may not actually be so intimate after all. Management Today warns that professional friendships are often based on what is done together in the workplace. Although that may be beneficial for finding personal support on work-related issues, the friendship can easily wither and die when the mutual experience of work is taken away (“Office Friends,” 2005). Privacy and power also come into play, since sharing personal details about your life can influence how others see you in a professional setting. For example, Pamela, an insurance broker from Chicago, did not want her colleagues or boss to know that she was heading into the hospital to have a double mastectomy in order to avoid breast cancer. But she did tell her close friend and colleague, Lisa. When Pamela returned to the office, there was a “get well soon” bouquet of flowers from her boss waiting on her desk. Lisa had blabbed; Pamela felt betrayed and had the additional burden of her colleagues’ knowing this private, intimate detail about her life (Rosen, 2004). It’s also important to remember that friendships in the workplace—and all organizations—are going to face trials when loyalty and professional obligations are at odds.

Please don’t take this to be a warning against making friends in the organizations to which you belong. Relationships with colleagues and other organizational members can be both career enhancing and personally satisfying; many workplace friendships last long after one or both friends leave a job. But it’s important to be mindful as you cultivate such relationships. The following tips can help (Rosen, 2004):