How do you feel about the 'Do you have a best friend at work' question?

I get along well with everyone I work with, but they aren't my family or my friends. It's important not to confuse the two.

Subjective and anecdotal experience: My most productive period was working with people that I got along really well with, as opposed to people I sort of just put up with.

I think this question is telling in the aggregate but not so much on an individual level.

Given a large company you can determine the cohesion between all employees and compare that to other (successful) companies.

I am no expert in any of this but this appears to be a proxy metric for tenure. As tenure increases people are more likely to consider someone a friend. So being below average on the cohesion would mean to me that the company needs to work on employee retention.

My 2 cents

I find difficulty putting much stock into it. Perhaps my answer is why: no, I don't have a 'best friend' at work. I do maintain connections with useful specialists, though.

I'll go to bat for my team/trust they'll do the same, but I avoid friendships at work for the same [personal] reasons one may avoid working with family.

I have a lot of acquaintances. None of them know what really makes me work, so I don't consider them friends. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't like what's behind the masks...

Now, in terms of effectiveness, it's a wash in my opinion. Distance has value, I can be the bad guy and not worry about it too much. I miss out on a lot but that's fine, I've seen a lot too.

If nothing else I want to offer this distinction: friends and friendly

I've noticed the core members of office mobs are close friends, while the rest of their network is controlled with manipulation. Are they measuring that?

I absolutely believe that it is predictive of top-performing teams. But in my experience, being a member of a top performing team is a crappy work/life balance. So for management types wanting maximum performance, it is a meaningful question. For those of us who are fine with working at a more comfortable 80% level, not 100% peak performance, it is a silly question. And that discrepancy is exactly why the question causes concern.

I’ve had a few really close work friends over the years. I even met my wife at work.

I agree with the notion that you should be careful about letting many work people know your personal business. However, close teams do work better together and good friendships make work so much more pleasurable and enrich your life. Part of the problem is that our work relationships are a huge part of our job and we need to manage them carefully. But all you have to do is look at people in working class jobs where the relationships have no impact on the job, and you see what great camaraderie they often have. I miss that.

My company used to have Gallop run our engagement survey. That one did seem to raise eyebrows often. I always wondered what the action item was there? Like, other questions that did poorly they would try and do things to remedy (or really just talk about it and never accomplish it), but idk how anyone is supposed to help people make friends at work?

I'm not exactly sure what this is asking. Is it asking if my best friend is also a co-worker? Or is it asking if I have someone who would be considered a best friend while inside the confines of the office?

At this point, I have 50 years of paid employment. I have generally got along with the people I worked with, but have never considered any as my best friends.

So what is the right answer if I don't care about this HR insanity and just want a job?

I’d say if you don’t have good friends at work, find another job.

Having experienced both, I’d actually choose a boring job with good friends vs an engaging job.

I've been inflicted with this survey for a couple of years now. The whole thing is pretty laughable, to be honest. At least, my team laughs at it.

That question is one of the most ridiculous -- so ridiculous that I (and the rest of my team) aren't even sure what is actually being asked.

It can't possibly be "best friend" in the traditional sense, as that simply doesn't make any sense. I have rarely seen a workplace where people are working with their best friends, mostly because most people have established their "best friends" well before they took their current position.

The consensus our team has reached for that question is to just answer "yes", because if too many people answer "no", then the result is that we have to develop some sort of action item to address this "problem".

In the end, the entire thing is just bullshit intended to make upper management feel better.

Interesting question.

TL;DR; its a gauge to see how willing to leave you are.

Long version: For some crazy reason I am often interested in why people leave a job. Of course there is a corollary, why do people stay? Especially if the job is terrible. In talking with a lot of people in many professions, the most common theme applied to why people stayed at a bad job.

People fail to move on from a bad job if they have a sense of loyalty to the co-workers and "cannot leave my friends behind".

Although it should be obvious, the fewer ties you have the more willing you are to move on.

Work is for sure more fun with people that you get along with. More suffering can be endured in that case (to put it bluntly).

this is typical HR bs...no explanation, no discussion, 'we have a paper that says so'...i still have to hear from any HR sources about their methodology and science behind it, and in the meantime everybody else is dancing to their tune