Employers trying to get employees to find friends at work sounds a lot like a anxious and over-zealous parent trying to get other kids to play with their at the park or schoolyard. It does work sometimes and that can be true at work as well. Is the role an employer should play? Not so sure that it is entirely wrong to lend a hand. In a large, diverse and dispersed company it may work quite well without some of the complications the article cites.
If the employer brokers a connection between an employee who works a machinist to another who works in the legal department for example, there is almost no likelihood that one would become the boss of the other at some point in the future. However, there is a tremendous benefit to bringing two people together who in the normal course of events have never crossed paths.
..You thought life was bad? At least you are not making crumpets with a stranger in finance.
It is a mistake for managers to wade into the business of friend-making, and not just because it royally misses the point. The defining characteristic of friendship is that it is voluntary. Employees are adults; they don’t need their managers to arrange play-dates. And the workplace throws people together, often under testing conditions: friendships will naturally follow.
The bigger problem is that workplace friendships are more double-edged than their advocates allow. They can quickly become messy when power dynamics change. The transition from friend to boss, or from friend to underling, is an inherently awkward one..
I don't know if forced crumpet-making is warranted but there is no harm is connecting random people in general. Where it goes from there is upto the individuals and there should certainly not be a performance metric for connections made and sustained - that would be a grave mistake.
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