Are Workplace Friends Assets or Obstacles to China's Growth?

As China moves closer to a true market-driven economy, its labor market has to adapt in order to deal with a basic tenet of capitalism: increased competition drives increased quality. Almost without exception, Chinese workers have more employment options today than ever before. It's a new maze of opportunity, and Chinese companies -- particularly those competing with foreign-owned enterprises looking for local talent -- face the need to reposition themselves to attract and retain talented people.

The important role of innovation in today's global economy, and the tendency of China's younger generation to favor individualism over the country's traditional collectivist ethos make it likely that repositioning will need to focus upon individuals and each employee's need to be seen as significant in his or her own right.

It may seem paradoxical, but trust and strong personal relationships among employees and between employees and local managers are important to an organization's success in developing the individual. After all, if a workgroup is to achieve shared goals while emphasizing individual contributions, then healthy interpersonal dynamics are necessary to hold the group together.

Best Friends at Work

One of the questions Gallup routinely asks employees is whether they "have a best friend at work." How important is the "best-friend factor" to maintaining a healthy workplace? Among Chinese workers who strongly agree that they have a best friend at work (by rating the item "5" on a 5-point scale), about one in four (25%) are engaged in their jobs overall. Among those who do not agree (by rating the item "1," "2," or "3") none is engaged overall.

Employee data from the new Gallup Poll of China indicate Chinese workplaces may actually have a leg up in this regard. Chinese employees are more likely to agree that they "have a best friend at work" (about 7 in 10 agree) than those in any other country studied by Gallup, with the exception of Thailand.

The strong likelihood of Chinese employees to maintain friendships at work makes sense in historical context. While most industrialized Western societies have maintained boundaries between employees' work and personal lives, that wasn't the case in 20^th-century China. When you joined a company, you joined a community. In many cases, the community existed for the enterprise: You lived in the same housing development as your coworkers; your children and your coworkers' children were schooled together. Though such formal arrangements are rapidly declining, the residual tendency to be close to coworkers may offer an inherent advantage to Chinese workplaces.

With Friends Like These …

But here's the rub. This high incidence of friendships at work doesn't appear to always translate into productivity and high levels of quality. When Chinese employees were asked for their level of agreement with the statement "my coworkers are committed to doing quality work," only about 5 in 10 urban Chinese agreed -- and fewer than 3 in 10 strongly agreed.

Ideally, workplace relationships drive greater productivity and foster the value of collaboration versus internal competition. But just because close relationships exist in the workplace doesn't mean they will automatically be productive ones. Particularly in a society in which compliance has traditionally been emphasized over personal productivity, workplace friendships may be disconnected from the shared goals of the workgroup.

Healthier Friendships

What can be done to encourage more collaborative, productive friendships? Local managers are the key. Setting clear expectations and clear and shared outcomes, maintaining caring relationships, and providing ample feedback and recognition can emphasize individual productivity while keeping workplace friends from falling into an "us vs. them" mentality with regard to managers or the overall organization.

Six in 10 Chinese employees agree that they have a manager or someone at work who cares about them. But fewer indicate this caring transfers to everyday practices such as feedback, recognition, and awareness of employees' learning and growth; thus, this sense of "caring" has diminished impact. The more local managers take some responsibility for the well-being of their team members, the more likely they will be able to turn coworker friendships from possible distractions into engines of productivity.