Why You Need to Make Friends at Work – Shannon Banks, Be Leadership Ltd

How important is it that you make friends in your workplace? Find out in this talk by Shannon Banks, with results from the Harvard Grant Study.

Hi, we are Happy

We are leading a movement to create happy, empowered and productive workplaces.

How can we help you and your people to find joy in at least 80% of your work?

Watch the session below

Read the transcripts

In 2013, Harvard released a study called The Harvard Grant Study, the results of it. You might have heard about it: it was a 75-year longitudinal study into what makes us happy and satisfied. And two out of the five core findings of that study were related to connection and relationships.

So the first one was that love is the foundation of happiness in life, and if you don’t have love, it’s very very hard to be happy.

And the second is that, the more connections you can create across your life, across all elements of your life, the more satisfied you tend to be in your life, and that includes work. So if you can create connection and have strong relationships in the workplace it actually increases your satisfaction with your life overall.

I’d love to get a show of hands: how many of you feel like you have a good friend at work?

Oh that’s awesome. OK. I would raise my hand to that, absolutely. People with a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be motivated and productive.

Like the stuff that John said, from First, Break All the Rules, very very connected to your productivity and motivation is how connected you are to the people in your workplace.

You would think, based on that, that everybody would have a good friend at work. No, they do not. This was just an article about friendship at work and you can see it’s from 10th June 2015 – it’s from last year: “My work colleagues are just that: colleagues. They are not friends.” That’s very clear.

So in actual fact, 42% of people in the UK say they have a good friend at work. And in the US, from the 1980s where it was about 50% of people had a good friend at work, it’s dropped all the way to less than a third so say they have a good friend at work. Now, that’s down to a number of things, but one of the things they tie that to is tenure because we no longer have jobs for life.

Keep informed about happy workplaces

Sign up to Henry's monthly Happy Manifesto newsletter, full of tips and inspiration to help you to create a happy, engaged workplace.

Shannon Banks gives a breakdown of the 75-year long Harvard Grant Study on what makes people happy and reflects on how this matters in the workplace. Happiness, according to this study, is down to connections. Having friendships and lasting connections within the workplace can make a difference in job satisfaction and how long people stay within the same company. Shannon breaks down why this is important in her talk.

What You Will Learn in This Video:

An overview of the Harvard Grant Study and it’s results.
How friendships at work make a difference in the workplace.
What motivates people within the workplace.
Stats on friendships between people in the same workplace in the UK.

Related Resources

Shannon Banks: Why Friendships in the Workplace are Vital – Watch Shannon’s talk, which furthers this subject and how important it is, along with what social skills could improve workplace friendships.
Am I Good Enough to Succeed? Imposter Syndrome in the Workplace – This blog post explores Imposter Syndrome and how to improve this feeling, to be more satisfied with your job.
How to Build Your Self-Confidence at Work – This blog post provides tips on how to improve your self confidence within your workplace.

About Shannon

Shannon Banks is a consultant, facilitator and coach with 20 years of experience working with organizations in the commercial sector. She has won international awards for her work in leadership development and is a sought-after public speaker. Prior to her current work, Shannon spent 17 years as a business and HR leader at Microsoft. You can contact her on Twitter at @shannonb.

Learn the 10 core principles to create a happy and productive workplace in Henry Stewart's book, The Happy Manifesto.

Support your aspiring and current managers to be empowering and confident leaders with Happy

Happy offers leadership programmes at Level 3, Level 5 and Level 7, from new managers/supervisor level all the way up to senior leadership teams and CEOs. These programmes are based on the ideas of trusting your people. They are practical and based on applying what yo’ve learnt. We aim to inspire and ignite change in your organisation, as well as giving you valuable management skills such as business strategy, decision-making, negotiation and project management.

We also offer programmes tailored specifically to people from Global Majority backgrounds. The content is the same, but have been designed to give new and experienced managers the skills they need to navigate organisational culture with a clearer perspective on their own potential, as well as building their confidence and expanding their professional strengths.

Claire Lickman

Claire is Head of Marketing at Happy. She has worked at Happy since 2016, and is responsible for Happy’s marketing strategy, website, social media and more. Claire first heard about Happy in 2012 when she attended a mix of IT and personal development courses. These courses were life-changing and she has been a fan of Happy ever since. She has a personal blog at lecari.co.uk.

Next Conference: 2025 Happy Workplaces Conference

Our Happy Workplaces Conference is our biggest event of the year, and we’d love for you to join us on Thursday 12th June!

This year’s event will be held in London, venue TBC. We may also offer a hybrid option for people to join us online simultaneously — do let us know if you are interested in joining online and we can add you to the waiting list.

As always, our next conference will be filled with interaction, discussion and space for reflection.

Book now and get our special half-price Early Bird rate — just use discount code Happy2025.