Do you need to be friends with the people you work with?

If you want to get promoted, yes:

Employees who are the most unwilling to develop workplace friendships seem to be the least likely to be promoted, according to research by Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage. In a blog post on HBR.org, he says he divided employees into quartiles on the basis of their willingness to initiate work relationships, such as by inviting coworkers out for drinks. Just 5% of the bottom quartile were extremely engaged in their work, and just 7% had been promoted in the past year. About 40% of employees in the other quartiles had received promotions.

Source: HBR Daily Stat

It might also keep you alive:

Dr. Sharon Toker of the Department of Organizational Behavior at TAU’s Leon Recanati Graduate School of Business Administration says that employees who believe that they have the personal support of their peers at work are more likely to live a longer life. “We spend most of our waking hours at work, and we don’t have much time to meet our friends during the weekdays,” explains Dr. Toker. “Work should be a place where people can get necessary emotional support.”

Dr. Toker and her TAU colleagues Prof. Arie Shirom and Yasmin Alkaly, along with Orit Jacobson and Ran Balicer from Clalit Healthcare Services, followed the health records of 820 adults who worked an average of 8.8 hours a day through a two-decade period. Those who had reported having low social support at work were 2.4 times more likely to die sometime within those 20 years, says Dr. Toker.

Source: Science Daily