Do you have a best friend at work?

This engagement survey question is one that most organizations score lowest on, and it gets the most pushback. Employers feel it’s outside their sphere of control. It’s not a program. It’s not a policy. You can’t roll it out in Q3.

Here’s why it’s the most important question on the survey.

Gallup (2024) has repeatedly shown that having best friends at work is key to employee engagement and job success, with a strong link to business outcomes (i.e., profitability, safety, inventory control, and retention).

But only 21% of women and 16% of men strongly agree they have one.

Best friends at work drive outcomes because they're more than a social connection or networking. It’s a reflection of psychological safety.

Not being seen, not being known, and having nowhere to turn to feel safe are among the most harmful burdens a person can carry (Van der Kolk, 2014). Workplaces naturally run counter to these needs, not necessarily with intention to harm, but by design of what we call good management.

Meetings run on hierarchy rather than on equal voice and shared purpose. Decisions cascade to people whom they impact, without their input. Feedback and performance assessment delivered top-down. Layoffs out of the blue without warning. No one to safely turn to when something goes wrong, as feedback is taken defensively.

The paradox is that we want top results but create workplaces and make decisions that undermine those very outcomes. Look at the other engagement metrics: recognition, having voice, purpose, expectations, my manager cares. All these other questions reveal whether employers are meeting employee needs.

When needs go unmet, there is lingering uncertainty and insecurity.

The lowest score on the survey is a mirror. It’s telling us how many people are coping alone.

What does a best friend really do?

They close the gap between workplace practices and emotional safety.

A regulated nervous system, in proximity, regulates another (Porges, 2011). In attachment research, safety is learned in relationship before a person can generate it alone (Bowlby, 1969). That’s equally true for a child as for someone age thirty-five with an impressive job title, and as for a leader who feels it’s lonely at the top.

Having a best friend is the counterbalancing safety mechanism.

What does this mean for our workplaces?

Psychological safety isn't optional. Yet we struggle to get this right because we are looking at safety without fully appreciating or acknowledging the threats. It's not harassment and bullying alone, or even lateral violence. Those are symptoms of the root causes.

There is a push-pull dynamic where we want people to be independently capable professionals producing results for the organization, yet the very nature of being human is relational and we thrive when creating something purposeful in the world.

It's like we are stuck focusing on individuals like data points, and miss how we actually work together as system. The system is optimized for individuals, not the whole.

No one succeeds alone. It's obvious, but often overlooked.

The root cause is individualistic thinking: the belief that people succeed alone, separate from relationships that are critical to wellbeing, performance, and organizational success. Initiatives in collaboration, culture, purpose, and motivation will all end up falling short because of this missed context.

So what is the solution?

Can I be a best friend at work? If not, why not? Go deep here. Can I be confided in without judgment, without competing, without spiraling into my own defensiveness?

Then look outward. Can we notice what's happening in the room and hold it, rather than react to it? Is someone yelling, gossiping, one-upping, going quiet and checking out? Most teams are doing this to varying degrees and pretend not to notice.

Neither of these is optional, and neither works without the other. A regulated person in an unregulated system still burns out. A well-designed system with people who can't self-regulate still fails. That's the harder problem, and it's the one I'm working through in the book I am writing: Fear at Work. Know when it drops by signing up at https://dbestinspired.com/

Citations

Gallup. (2022, August 17; updated 2024, January 19). The increasing importance of a best friend at work. Gallup Workplace. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/397058/increasing-importance-best-friend-work.aspx

Gallup. (2026). Gallup Q12® employee engagement survey. Gallup, Inc.

Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. Basic Books.

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In the spirit of respect and truth, I honour and acknowledge that I live and work within the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

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