Having friends at work place apart from making the day go by faster and improving work productivity also increases the human life span, according to a recent study.
This recent research found that a positive relationship with your co-workers has long-term health benefits.
Head of the research team, Sharon Toker at Tel Aviv University (TAU), said employees who believe they have the personal support of their colleagues at work are more likely to live a longer life.
According to her, “We spend most of our waking hours at work, and we don’t have much time to meet our friends during the weekdays .Work should be a place where people can get necessary emotional support ”, she added.
The researchers followed the health records of 820 adults who worked an average of 8.8 hours a day through a two-decade period.
Those who had reported having low social support at work were 2.4 times more likely to die sometime within those 20 years.
The researchers controlled for various psychological, behavioral or physiological risk factors, such as smoking, obesity and depression, and administered a questionnaire to participants, who were drawn from a wide variety of professional fields including finance, health care and manufacturing.
For Mr Nicholas Audu who has been in the corporate world for 20 years, “when you maintain a good relationship at work place, i.e having the support of your colleagues, it makes you happy and when you are happy you have little or no stress and when you are not under any pressure as a result of stress from work you are bound to live long”.
Stress at work is one of the major health risks most people face in this part of the world. Creating a workplace defined by friendliness doesn’t cost anything but it pays big dividends, he added.
He says further that our lives revolve around our various jobs because in order to survive one must have one thing or the other doing so as to put food on the table.
“It is either you work in an office or you are self- employed or you are an artisan, but somehow you must work with people- not just working with them but having a good relationship with them i.e being friendly.
In doing this you are at peace with everybody and you are happy. Once these two things are in place you will definitely live long”, he added.
The study also found that employees’ perception of emotional support at work was the strongest indicator of future health.
During the course of the study, 53 participants died, most of who had negligible social connections with their co-workers.
A lack of emotional support at work led to a 140 per cent increased risk of dying in the next twenty years compared to those who reported supportive co-workers, she concluded. Toker said many workplaces have lost their way in creating environments in which employees can create social relationships.
“Despite open concept offices, many people use email rather than face-to-face communication, and social networking sites that may provide significant social connection are often blocked,” the researchers said.
When you work in an unfriendly environment, it has a lot of health implications. For instance one falls ill and there is nobody to fill in for one, the fear of losing the job is enough worry which could result in serious health implications, e.g high blood pressure, says a respondent.
Mrs Alice Ogbonna, a senior civil servant says that emotional support at work is very important.
“ Whenever I took ill and given some days to rest, I always itch to get back to work because once I get to the office, seeing my colleagues alone makes me well.
This is so because we all support one another at work and we work like one big family and everybody is happy”.
In a situation where the reverse is the case, where you don’t have the support of your fellow workers, you suffer emotionally, there is little or no sense of belonging, and above all, it takes a toll on your health which of course can reduce lifespan, she stated.
From the outcome of the research, head of the team, Toker suggests that companies should create coffee corners where people can congregate to sit and talk, informal social outings for members of staff; an internal virtual social network similar to Facebook or a peer-assistance programme where employees can confidentially discuss stresses and personal problems that may affect their position at work.
Anything that encourages employees to feel emotionally supported would be helpful, she said.
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