Think about it. If your best employees have a best friend at work, are they likely to stay?

If your employee doesn’t have any social connection to the rest of your crew, will it be easier to leave? How important is it to enjoy the people they spend most of their waking hours with?

The benefits of creating a team culture on your farm are many: Lower turnover, higher productivity, lower overall headcounts, more profits andfewer safetyincidents. If you want a simple metric to show if you are on track to building a team, then read on.

“Do you have a best friend at work?”

How would your best employees answer this question? Right now you may be inclined to quit reading because the question seems silly. What does this have to do with anything?After all you are running a farm with lots of work, nota social club.

Business and social don’t mix. Or do they?

The research organization Gallup has been asking this question of employees across every segment of our economy for over 30 years. Gallup found that employees who answered “yes” to this question were over twice as likely to be fully engaged – that is, “all in” with their work compared to those who answered no. They have found a concrete link between having a best friend at work and how much effort employees put into their work and employee turnover.

If your farm could use more employees who are “all in,” then keep reading. 

Today, many employees are looking for more than a paycheck. There are many components that make up a farm’s culture. Trust, belonging to a team, and a belonging to a larger purpose areimportant.

We spend more time at work than at home with our families. As an owner, you want to work around great people; your employees feel the same way. In absence of a trusted and liked coworker, your employees will feel unattached and isolated.

However,if they have at least one best friend at work they will have many attachments to that person, a history of working together, and history on your farm. Why is that important? It will be hard for your employee to leave your farm if they will also be severing deep friendships by leaving.

On the flip side, they also are more productive when they enjoy their work and part of enjoying work is working around people they like.

How can you begin fostering employee friendships?

Is there any farm in North America that would not like to have fully engaged employees coupled with low turnover?  Fostering friendships at work are best used to fine tune an already great work culture. But this fine-tuning will create connections that your employees will be loath to break by working someplace else. The tight labor market will not loosen its grip any time soon, so new tools will need to be employed. Fostering friendships at work is an important tool in your employee toolbox.

The opinions of the author are not necessarily those of Farm Futures or Farm Progress.