Besides family, many people who are employed are required to spend plenty of time with, wanted or not, co-workers. For those who are directly employed by a company, their work lives, virtual or in the office, are tethered to these relationships.
The company CapRelo (a relocation company) has undertaken a review into co-worker relationships and the impact upon individuals and upon the workplace. The findings are drawn out from a survey of over 3000 people based in the U.S. Due to the sensitive nature of some of the questions, the survey was run anonymously.
The findings showed that close to 3 out of 4 respondents do not feel as though they can take substantial time away from work due to concerns that their co-workers will be unable to pick up extra work that comes through.
This finding provides some background to employment relations within the U.S., where often the balance of power is more heavily skewed towards the employer. In this case, workloads and resources appear to be a problem.
There are other factors arising from interactions with co-workers. Here some 1 in 4 respondents said that a co-worker had been the reason they have left a position. The worst co-worker trait in such circumstances was identified as passive aggressiveness.
Passive-aggressive behaviour is a pattern of indirectly expressing negative feelings instead of openly addressing them. There will also be other personality types that will cause clashes within the workplace.
As to whether remote working has altered any aspect of interpersonal relations, around 34 percent of the poll expressed the view that the option to work remotely has positively affected work culture. However, a larger group, at 41 percent, said there has been no change. Here the remote working benefits may not be as strong as other surveys have suggested.
Moreover, 67 percent of respondents indicate that remote-working has made them feel less inclined to develop relationships with co-workers. Given that interactions at work and support from fellow workers is often a step to success, this finding may well be to the detriment of many companies.
There are some demographic variances. While 70 percent of respondents think it’s more important that a co-worker be good at their job than fun to work with, 44 percent of the population dubbed Gen Zers by marketers think it is more important that a co-worker is fun to work with than be good at their job.
This last finding may provide a clue about generational differences in work ethic.
