HRGuru

I'm interested in knowing your feelings on "Friends at work".  You know - you hang out after work, go shopping, or have other social experiences with co-workers, but when Monday comes back around what?  What happens in a falling out? Do you support workplace friendships or do you suggest that people refrain from these interactions and get a different social group?  Tell me your thoughts and why.

This is an interesting question...

As HR professionals we need to know where and how to draw the line with our friends at work. We are viewed and judged by whom we relate with, more so than any other professional. We carry an important image and with that comes perception. How we develop and manage our friends at work can be viewed as not being impartial when the time comes to enforcing polices with that particular employee. Therefore, at work I call them colleagues rather than friends.

As HR professional we do have to choose our friends wisely.  As someone indicated in the forum we have to keep it professional.  Another though is everyone that you meet is not your friend

Absolutely, it is very hard for HR people to have true friends at business.  Probably the worst time I ever had was when I had to deal with two good friends, people who had mentored me in the financial business when I first started out.  With one, he had a serious cocaine problem, to the point of endangering himself and others including myself.  While I didn't turn him in, when it did break, I fought hard to keep him from being prosecuted and worked hard to get his family involved in his recovery.  It was very painful.

In the second, I became the assistant manager for a good friend, only to find out that she was stealing serious money from the company, in kahoots with several executives.  They had arranged a loan that was in clear violation of the government regs and if the gov found out, they would close the company and some 700+ people would lose their jobs.  I had to report this.  I worked with the board of directors of our parent company and our labor attorney to confirm my suspicions and when proven true, we went to the government and disclosed the information.  The parent company put up $10 million dollars as a bond (recapitalization) for the bank and I worked the next year and a half with government regulators sitting at my desk and next to my employees as we solved this loan issue and eventually saved the bank and everyones jobs.   Nobody was ever prosecuted so many of these people ended up in other banks/lending institutions and I was "blackballed" in that industry.  Very difficult.  I ended up with several death threats, had my cars vandalized and other serious attempts occurred to try to cause both personal and professional problems.

These were good friends and I vowed after that when I finally transitioned into HR that I would keep my distance.  Good thing, I've since had to deal with investigations in several companies where not only terminations have occured, but I've been involved in case where 13 employees have been prosecuted and put in prison.  In those companies, nobody wants to be my friend either.  It seem I have a pretty good knack at finding bad people doing bad things.   (Originally I was going to be an FBI agent, but I fell in love and my wife to be couldn't handle that type of life.  So I guess I've pursued part of my original love of law enforcement by sniffing out these things.  Funny thing, my other strong personality trait is trusting people and believing the best about people.  This conflict has lead to a lot of hurts, some as simple as wanting to have friendships with really neat people but foregoing it because of my HR role.  When I leave a company, I go back to those people and develop friendships where I can.  Sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't.)

It is more difficult in HR because you such a focal point and touch many people's lives.  I tend to keep work and friends separate.  I believe you can be friendly to people you work with but to involve them socially outside work is something in which I too have been cautious.  You never can tell when you will need to make a hard decision involving your coworkers and being close friends is really tough.  I had one colleague who was a close friend and fortunately we agreed when it came to business, we had to put our friendship aside and it never tarnished our friendship.  But I think our friendship was an exception to the rule.  Another friend who worked with me used our friendship to her advantage and I got burned.  It  taught me to use my judgment more wisely. Live nd learn!

Long ago, in a land far away, I was young and I had become great friends with my manager.  Initially, she was not my manager, but we had so much fun at company get togethers (no, not that type of fun) that we decided to have me transfer to her office.  It was great.  But we had a wicked sense of humour.

When I arrived at her office I realized she had inherited a really crazy worker, I mean a really loco weed whacko!   After roughly a year of counseling sessions, therapy, etc., and having lost over 75% of our staff due to her weird behaviours, my manager finally terminated her.    Well, being evil as we are, we held a party celebrating the new found freedom from this employee.   Unfortunately, when she left that day, she forgot her sweater and she walked back in only to see the cake that read something like "Goodbye and Good Riddance Crazy (employee name)!"

Needless to say she sued and tried to make that an issue.  I spent nearly a whole day on the stand explaining the termination process and also explaining the rationale for the celebration.  We won the case, but it cost us $30k in legal fees, not to mention the embarassment and more importantly the truly hurt feelings she felt.  Needless to say, I haven't celebrated (except personally and privately) any other employee terminations since and that's some 30 years ago.

I caused an ex-colleague to be very upset with me when we were discussing this very topic about "friends in the workplace" during a lunch session at work with other colleagues.  I said there will always be people I know I will remain in contact even if I leave the company but not all. I added that I do not take the word "friend" lightly. I am friendly, sociable and very willing to help out at work, but I draw the line of behaving as I would with my friends out of work. It is wise to keep a distance especially in HR as I do not want a possible "friendship" to cloud my judgment.

BTW, the reason my ex-colleague was upset with me is because I told her I may have to think long and hard of donating my kidney to her if she needs one, whereas I would do so for one of my friends.

Looi,

That line about the "kidney" is a perfect analogy for comparing the distinction between an acquaintance and a friend!   Loved it, thank you!

Great perspective, BlueRio - thanks for sharing.  That definitely is another field where there are challenges.  Knowing too much - or being perceived at knowing even a smidgeon more can push you into places you shouldn't or needn't be.