Australians not keen to socialise with workmates when off-duty

Ever wondered why your colleagues rarely want to join you for a party after work?

Qualtrics Asia Pacific managing director Bill McMurray.

Australians like to think of themselves as a social bunch and few people turn down the chance for a drink or a weekend barbecue.

But when it comes to the workplace, an international study of 14 developed countries found only 12.9 per cent of Australians socialised with their colleagues outside of work a great deal or a lot, ranking us the ninth least social.

The study of 5000 white-collar workers, undertaken by international business insights company Qualtrics, which looked at global attitudes to work, found Italians to be the most social with their colleagues, at 35.5 per cent, and New Zealanders the most anti-social, at just 7.4 per cent.

Qualtrics Asia Pacific managing director Bill McMurray says making friends at work is significant for some people, while socialising away from the office is a lot less important for others.

US-born McMurray, 57, has worked and lived in Japan, Singapore, London, the US and Australia, and says the workforce in each country has its idiosyncrasies, cultural expectations, methodologies and differing attitudes.

“It’s harder to make friends in London, but you make lifelong friends,” McMurray says.

“In America it’s much easier to make friends. Every place has something to offer and you just have to go there with an open mind and make the most of it.

“Australia is a great place to work and you have some fabulous cultures here.

“People tend to be open, willing to communicate, they’re driven, and if you ask for feedback you get honest feedback.”

Australians may not want to have a beer with Duncan from the cubicle to the left on a Friday night after work, and they do not want to be friends with their boss either.

Of the developed countries surveyed, the least important attributes for workers when rating their managers were assertiveness, being energetic and being friendly. It seems nobody likes a friendly boss who bounces around the office, but they do want their manager to care.

“Workers in most countries preferred that their manager cared about their employees; in 10 of the 14 countries honesty also rated very high. The least important globally was assertiveness, being energetic and being friendly,” McMurray says.

“They care less about being a friend than being a competitor.”

But he says while Australians may be less social with workmates outside of work, they would rather commute to an office and have contact with others.

A growing trend towards flexible hours and working from home does not suit a lot of people, McMurray says.

Australians rated the opportunity to work remotely as among the least important attributes when deciding where to work, at 19 per cent, along with knowing their company’s direction and health benefits.

Health benefits were among the most important factors in the US — where work is often tied to insurance — compared with salary, work-life balance and location in Australia.

“From a work-life balance perspective it was interesting to see remote working was one of the least important considerations, if they were able to work from home as well as the office,” he says.

“While it’s an important consideration it probably applies to a smaller population.

“The majority of people are happy to go into an office here. The greater number are happier to work in an office.”

Qualtrics surveyed workers in France, Canada, the US, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Australia, Germany, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Britain on their attitudes, and many workers were keen to put down a colleague and rate themselves as being better performers.

Several questions centred on productivity, where people rated how productive they thought they were.

On average, workers were eager to note they were productive for 70 per cent of the hours in which they worked, with the Germans rating themselves the most productive at 72.3 per cent, and the Italians admitting being the least productive, working just 48.5 per cent of the time.

Whether it relates to the siesta or not, Spaniards were the second least productive, admitting to work just 58.1 per cent of the time. Greeks were next at 61.9 per cent.

Australians say they are productive for 67.4 per cent of their hours worked.

However, people rated their compatriots to be less productive, with the Italians saying just 46 per cent of their workmates’ time was spent toiling, and the Australians believing they were productive during 63.1 per cent of their working hours, rating us sixth.

People also rated themselves more productive than their colleagues, which the survey refers to as the “Lake Wobegon effect”, “where people generally perceive themselves positively relative to others”.

US participants rate themselves 10.9 per cent more productive than their colleagues, and Australians think they are 4.3 per cent more productive.

Perhaps that means Australians rate themselves as working almost equally as hard as each other, and the Italians, at the bottom at just 2.7 per cent, accept that no one works very hard.

McMurray says what drives people the most around the world is a person’s desire to support themselves and their family, ahead of enjoyment, saving for retirement and building wealth.

“Australia has the highest proportion of people in the world working specifically to build wealth, where 14.8 per cent said they were working for that, as opposed to the No 1 driver of supporting themselves and their family,” he says.

Now that companies are aware of what drives their employees, particularly those with international offices, McMurray says they can use the findings to drive productivity, monitor engagement and even offer appropriate incentives.

That could mean targeted salary packaging for financially motivated workers, less micromanaging of employees who want autonomy, and offering better engagement programs.

“In Australia the motivation is salary packaging and it’s important for organisations to have the right engagement programs to link productivity to performance,” McMurray says.