The Safety Power of Friendship: Why Workplace Bonds Matter More Than You Think
Buried in Gallup’s 2018 study Why We Need Best Friends at Work is a fascinating statistic that was brought up at the June 17, 2025 AGC highway safety committee meeting.
Companies where six out of ten employees say they have a friend at work not only have more engaged employees and higher profit margins, but have a 36% reduction in safety incidents.
How Could Friendship at Work Impact Safety?
Here are a few ideas shared by the committee:
- Having somebody who's there to watch your back and call you out if you aren't being safe
- Having somebody that you can talk to during a break to work through stress so that you can go back to work being 100% present in your job
- Having somebody that you can go to to ask questions without worrying about feeling stupid
- Being more willing to follow safety rules because you think about how it will impact others and not just yourself
- Chatting naturally spreads information about hazards people have observed
- Knowing each other better makes it easier to spot and call out signs of fatigue, distraction, burn out, or illness
- Friendship leads to lower turnover, more stable crews, and more experience with each other, work processes, and potential issues
- Friends are better at communicating, reducing the missteps that happen during crew changes, equipment swaps, or multi-trade operations when under pressure
If something as simple as promoting friendship among your employees can have as dramatic of an effect on reducing your safety incidents, it’s got to be worth considering what we can do to actively promote it rather than just passively permitting or inadvertently preventing it.
For a schedule of the AGC Safety Committee's meetings please email tsmith@agc-utah.org for more information. We would love to have you become involved!