Are friends better than perks?

HEALTH

WITH the rise of workplace perks in the United States, like unlimited paid vacation and flexible work-from-home policies, it would be fair to assume freedom and autonomy are of utmost importance to today’s workers.
But in a survey of San Diego’s top workplaces, happy employees were more likely to report that people – colleagues, mentors, bosses or workplace friends – were the reason they loved their work.
Relationships with colleagues have always played a role in workplace satisfaction, but experts say it’s possible these office relationships are more critical today than they once were.
Thanks to the technology-fuelled modern lifestyle, people are experiencing more social isolation than in years past. With younger generations, dinner parties have died, and neighbours are just strangers who live next door. Human interaction is even being removed from daily life tasks, like ordering lunch and shopping for groceries. A new feature of the Uber app even lets riders request that their drivers not speak to them at all.
“We’ve lost many forums and places where we had more time to discover meaningful relationships,” said Dan Negroni, a talent development consultant in San Diego. “Gone are the days of apprenticeship and mentorship for learning. Now we’re self-learning through platforms like YouTube.”
For many adults, that leaves one daily institution for them to form social bonds: the workplace. And employers should take note, because these social connections could be a meaningful contributor to worker performance, satisfaction and retention.
What happens when you have friends at work?
There’s an extensive body of research dating back to the 1980s that shows workplace friendships reduce turnover and absenteeism, as well as boosting feelings of job security, comfort and job satisfaction. Employees with friends at work also tend to engage in altruistic behaviours by providing co-workers with help, guidance, advice or feedback with various work-related matters.
Peer-reviewed research published in the journal American Psychologist also suggests that companies can benefit from such friendships, as these workers help one another and communicate well. Both of these behaviours can increase effort and productivity.
Negroni said startups and other modern companies aren’t off-base by offering free lunches, kombucha on-tap, and video games in the break room. It’s not about the perks; it’s about the social gatherings that they inspire.
“The frat environment might actually work,” Negroni said. “A Cornell study showed that workplaces are more productive if people eat together. Employers don’t do this because millennials are entitled and want the perk. They’re doing this because we connect by sharing meals.”
At Shield AI, a robotics startup in San Diego, CEO Ryan Tseng said the company was very deliberate in creating their culture. Their company values, which include being kind and trustworthy, are regularly discussed at meetings. In the Union-Tribune’s workplace survey, administered in conjunction with Philadelphia-based Energage to determine San Diego County’s top workplaces, most of Shield AI’s employees mentioned their colleagues as the reason they loved their jobs.
“It comes down to the people – all the people I work with are amazing!” one anonymous employee wrote. “Truly a teamwork-oriented culture where everyone goes out of their way to help each other succeed.”
Tseng said Shield AI makes an effort to know their employees as people, making sure they’re taking care of themselves, and that they’re taking time for their family, friends, and “the things that energise them”.
“Co-workers have a huge influence on the way you feel at work and how you feel when you go home,” Tseng said.
Millennials and Gen Z: Do they need more help?
Negroni, who specialises in helping bridge generational gaps between baby boomers and younger workers like millennials or Gen Z, said he believes social connection is especially important for younger staff. They often haven’t built social skills by the time they reach the office and find themselves isolated and unsure how to establish meaningful relationships.
“They’re not learning these things in school, and then they get to the workplace and we expect them to know it,” Negroni said. “It’s a shockingly systematic problem.”
Miriam Kirmayer, a therapist and friendship researcher at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, said it’s not just younger workers who need and value human connection in the workplace.
– dpa/The San Diego Union-Tribune

Implants could restore standing

WHEN Vivian Mushahwar first applied to grad school, she wrote about her idea to fix paralysis by rewiring the spinal cord.
It was only after she was accepted into a bioengineering programme that the young electrical engineer learned her idea had actually prompted laughter.
“I figured, hey I can fix it, it’s just wires,” Mushahwar said. “Yeah, well, it’s not just wires. So I had to learn the biology along the way.”
It’s taken Mushahwar a lot of work over two decades at the University of Alberta, but the Canada Research Chair in Functional Restoration is still fixated on the dream of helping people walk again. And thanks to an electrical spinal implant pioneered in her laboratory and work in mapping the spinal cord, that dream could become a reality in the next decade.
Because an injured spinal cord dies back, it’s not simply a matter of reconnecting a cable. Three herculean feats are needed. You have to translate brain signals. You have to figure out and control the spinal cord. And you have got to get the two sides talking again.
People tend to think the brain does all the thinking, but Mushahwar says the spinal cord has built-in intelligence. A complex chain of motor and sensory networks regulate everything from breathing to bowels, while the brain stem’s contribution is basically “go!” and “faster!” Your spinal cord isn’t just moving muscles, it’s giving you your natural gait.
Other researchers have tried different avenues to restore movement. By sending electrical impulses into leg muscles, it’s possible to get people standing or walking again. But the effect is strictly mechanical and not particularly effective. Mushahwar’s research has focused on restoring lower-body function after severe injuries using a tiny spinal implant. Hair-like electrical wires plunge deep into the spinal grey matter, sending electrical signals to trigger the networks that already know how to do the hard work.
In a new paper in Scientific Reports, the team showcases a map to identify which parts of the spinal cord trigger the hip, knees, ankles and toes, and the areas that put movements together. The work has shown that the spinal maps have been remarkably consistent across the animal spectrum, but further work is required before moving to human trials.
The implications of moving to a human clinical setting would be massive, but must follow further work that needs to be done in animals. Being able to control standing and walking would improve bone health, improve bowel and bladder function, and reduce pressure ulcers. It could help treat cardiovascular disease — the main cause of death for spinal cord patients — while bolstering mental health and quality of life. For those e spinal injuries, an implant could be therapeutic, removing the need for months of gruelling physical therapy regimes that have limited success.
“We think that intraspinal stimulation itself will get people to start walking longer and longer, and maybe even faster,” said Mushahwar. “That in itself becomes their therapy.”
Progress can move at a remarkable pace, yet it’s often maddeningly slow.
“There’s been an explosion of knowledge in neuroscience over the last 20 years,” Mushahwar said. “We’re at the edge of merging the human and the machine.”
Given the nature of incremental funding and research, a realistic timeline for this type of progress might be close to a decade.
– Science Daily