Are you too busy to stop by your colleague's office to chat or go to lunch? Or are you someone who keeps work relationships strictly business? Be warned: If you're not reaching out to make and nurture friendships at work, you're probably hurting your career.
Recent research finds that people who initiate office friendships, pick up slack for their co-workers, and organize workplace social activities are 40% more likely to get a promotion in the subsequent two years. "How much you give at work directly affects how much you get at work," says Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work.
In his research, Achor divides individuals into quartiles based on how much they provide this kind of social support to colleagues. Work altruists, the top 25%, give the most, while work isolators, the bottom 25%, provide the least. Work altruists report significantly higher job satisfaction and feel 10 times more engaged by work than people in the lowest quartile.
So not only do these uber-connectors benefit from their behavior, the employer gains as well. "Happiness is the greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy," Achor says. "If you can find a way of creating happiness at work, you're 31% more productive, your sales are 37% higher, people perceive you as being more charismatic and you're three times more creative."
To increase social support, Ochsner Health System, a large Louisiana health care provider that Achor works with, implemented an approach called the "10/5 Way." After educating 11,000 employees about the importance of offering support to each other, Ochsner asked employees to make eye contact and smile whenever they walk within 10 feet of another person in the hospital. If they pass within 5 feet, they say hello.
Since then, Ochsner has seen a 5% increase in patients' likelihood to recommend the organization, greater unique patient visits, and a significant improvement in overall patient satisfaction. "We can change the social script very easily by making some small adjustments," Achor says.
Social support also improves the health of individuals. People who receive high levels of social support are as likely to live longer as those who exercise regularly, and low social support does as much damage as high blood pressure. A 2007 study of 1,648 Harvard students found that social support was the best predictor of happiness in periods of high stress, with a correlation of .71, according to Achor. That's a stronger tie than the link between smoking and cancer, which is .37.
Researchers investigating the effects of social support are part of the larger positive psychology movement, which stresses the ability of individuals to change their own level of happiness -- and related positive life outcomes. Participants in one of Achor's studies were asked to take daily steps to build positivity, such as writing a positive message to someone in their social network or writing down three things they were grateful for over the course of three weeks. Individuals' mean score on the life satisfaction scale -- a metric widely accepted to accurately predict productivity and happiness at work -- moved from 22.96 before the training (on a 35-point scale) to 27.23 four months later.
