77: Wellness at Work—Enhancing Connection and Personal Fulfillment, with Aaron Chasan

Can workplace friendships be the key to personal fulfillment and organizational success?

In our next episode of the wellness at work series, Aaron Chasan helps us explore the impact of strong social connections on employee retention, loyalty, and resilience. We discuss how well-connected employees become more efficient and supportive and are better equipped to navigate challenges. We also talk about the role of organizations in helping employees connect, especially in hybrid or remote environments and concerns companies have during layoffs and why maintaining and rebuilding connections is crucial.

Aaron Chasan is the founder of Thred, an HR tech company that connects coworkers based on shared interests.

You can learn more about Thred on their website, and contact Aaron on LinkedIn or via email at aaron@thred.works. 

Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.

Transcript

Aaron Chasan: 1:14

I mean in general when you think about like community and friendship. Those things are quite important for wellness. If I am lonely then it's a lot harder for me to feel like safe and comfortable and like I can ask for the support I need. And I can get the support I need because I have people who are willing to offer it.

Manya Chylinski: 1:38

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, manya Chylinski, and today we have another episode in our series on wellness at work, and I'm talking to Aaron Chasan. He's the founder of Thred, a human resources technology company that connects coworkers based on shared interests. We had a conversation about the importance of friendships at work, why that matters to the individual and to the organization, and I think you're really going to find this interesting. Thanks for listening. Hi, aaron, I'm so excited that you and I are chatting today. Thanks for being here.

Aaron Chasan: 2:20

Of course, super excited to be here.

Manya Chylinski: 2:22

Well, before we dig into the topic, one question I like to ask all my guests is if you could have dinner with any historical figure, however you define that. Who would it be and why?

Aaron Chasan: 2:35

Okay, I've been thinking a lot about this. It's hard to come up with somebody who is both like interesting and like didn't we didn't later discover that they were problematic in some way?

Manya Chylinski: 2:48

Yes.

Aaron Chasan: 2:49

The person that I have landed on is Frederick Olmsted. Do you know who Olmsted is Architect?

Manya Chylinski: 2:56

Oh, the landscape architect.

Aaron Chasan: 2:58

Yeah, I read a couple years ago and got like into Olmsted because I thought he was very interesting, like one of the first conservationists also just designed these beautiful parks like Central Park and Chicago State Fair, like landscape architecture back in the day and I don't know he was like someone who was really interested in conservationism and like creating beautiful spaces, while others were interested in like giant buildings that were super profitable, yeah, and so I think that he would just be a fascinating person to talk to and I would love to kind of ask him like OK, you can design a city from scratch. What does that look like? It'd be really cool.

Manya Chylinski: 3:35

That would be cool, and I wonder how different it would look from the cities that we have now.

Aaron Chasan: 3:40

Yeah, I would imagine quite different.

Manya Chylinski: 3:43

Well, he designed the Emerald Necklace here in Boston, so I have.

Aaron Chasan: 3:46

Oh, he did.

Manya Chylinski: 3:47

I am familiar with some of his work, so I think that's great. I wish I could make it happen. I think that would be amazing.

Aaron Chasan: 3:54

Thank you for sharing.

Manya Chylinski: 4:02

So we are here talking about the concept of wellness at work, and you come at this from the perspective of friendship and social connectivity at work. So I guess, just get us started. Why is that something that's important to be thinking about in a workplace?

Aaron Chasan: 4:16

There are quite a lot of reasons. The big ones that we sort of talk about are retention and intent to stay and kind of like loyalty and resilience and all of that. So when you're well connected you stay at the company a lot longer. The big reason is, if I have a huge network and then I get a job offer for a similar role, the opportunity cost of leaving is really really high. Similarly, if I'm really well connected, I know who to go to for questions and it's easier for me to figure stuff out and start shipping projects faster, and all that Also. If I'm well connected, then I have this network that can support me through hard times. And so friendship at work is obviously really important for our personal lives. Like we spend so much of our time working, it would be a bummer to not have folks that we like, that we are working with. And then also it's really important for organizations too.

Manya Chylinski: 5:14

Right, Well, in what ways? I mean you mentioned it improves retention and intent to stay and maybe employee loyalty. What are some other reasons? It's something that workplaces and managers and leaders should be thinking about this.

Aaron Chasan: 5:29

Yeah, I mean if I'm managing a team of folks and those people are very isolated, they're going to have trouble getting their work done. Like I mentioned before, they don't have a lot keeping them at the company, outside of maybe their basic compensation package, and so obviously you have to get that stuff right Before anything else. You need to get comp right and you need to get culture right, but then after that there are these other factors that start to really impact whether people stay and what it looks like when they are staying, and friendship is a really big one. If I have these people that I trust and that I like, that I'm working with, then it becomes a lot easier to do that hard work when the hard work comes.

Manya Chylinski: 6:11

Yes, absolutely. I feel like the concept of friendship at work and having friends at work isn't something we used to explicitly talk about. Yeah, why are we thinking about it now?

Aaron Chasan: 6:27

Yeah, good question. When you started asking this question I thought back to I was randomly in Munich last year on vacation and I ran into these Americans at this like beer garden and happened to have like a mutual connection with them, which was bizarre. But then when I told them about what I did they paused and they were in an elderly couple and they're like my dad would have been so shocked that that is like a career path Like my dad, who was a miner, would have been just absolutely floored that, like you know, you can make a business out of like friends at work. Because the way that we've been, we look at work now is really different.

Aaron Chasan: 7:06

I think like it used to be a lot more transactional in the ways that like when work was becoming and we were like getting toward this nine to five work week, it was transactional and like you think of things like board and the assembly line and all of that. And then since then people have started to realize like wait a second, I spend the majority of my life working. This can't just be transactional. I need to feel fulfilled while I'm doing this or else also go somewhere else where like that's possible. And so I think like that just general trend has made it something that people are willing to care about. And then the other aspect of it is that the companies that have put things like this at the forefront became more successful and attracted the best talent, and then all of the other companies that lost their talent to those ones hopefully realized that was the problem. And if they didn't, then a lot of the times you know they failed.

Manya Chylinski: 8:04

Yes, thank you for that. When I think about a workplace, you mentioned that one of these individuals their parent was a miner. When I think about workplaces, I think about the kind of workplace I think that you and I are familiar with the office consulting firm. We're all in cubicles there's a break room, all of the typical things. That is not what every workplace, or maybe even most workplaces, look like. Does it make a difference, this idea of friendship at work, what the workplace looks like or what type of workplace we're talking about?

Aaron Chasan: 8:42

Yeah, I think it does make a difference between different industries. I think that having a friend at work is more important at some types of companies than others, but I do think there is value in it, regardless of the industry, even if you're a miner. Yes, regardless of the industry, even if you're a miner, yes, like it would be nice to go to work and see your like pal, your buddy, before, like you start and then after work, you're like man, that was brutal, like I'd like to grab a drink with this person and debrief, because they're the only person in my life that actually knows what I'm going through you know, my loved ones can empathize, but they're not going through it and so, regardless of the industry, it's important, but I also think that it would be unrealistic to say that it's equally important everywhere.

Aaron Chasan: 9:27

Like specifically in jobs where you might not have some of those other first priority needs met, like comp or like if it's a really high stress environment, then it's not as important to like have a best friend at work, because that's not going to change the fact that you're unhappy with the base situation. Right, yeah, I think it definitely is different, but still important. You know, everywhere.

Manya Chylinski: 9:51

Yeah, absolutely so. I think a lot about mental wellness in the organizational context, and how does the concept of friendship support, or maybe not support, the concept of mental wellness in a workplace in particular?

Aaron Chasan: 10:06

I mean in general when you think about community and friendship. Those things are quite important for wellness. If I am lonely, then it's a lot harder for me to feel safe and comfortable and like I can ask for the support I need and I can get the support I need because I have people who are willing to offer it. I have to really put myself out there if I don't know people and I have to, like raise my hand for help.

Aaron Chasan: 10:31

There's a lot of good research on this topic. I mean Gallup's been studying the importance of the best friend at work for years and years and this year they did a bit of a refresh and they put out an article about best friends at work, and one of the cool things that I took away from that article was this concept of like having a best friend at work is key for navigating like hard situations and uncertain situations, and so when you have these people who are in your corner, it is easier to feel supported and well, and then that makes it easier to navigate those situations that are that are tough yes, yeah, yes, and I think about what are some things that a friendship relationship brings, like trust and that support you mentioned and feeling part of the tribe.

Manya Chylinski: 11:21

Even just those three things are important to feeling connected to the workplace so well. You mentioned culture as well, and how does the company culture fit into all of this?

Aaron Chasan: 11:33

Yeah, like fit into wellness, resilience, friendship, all those things.

Manya Chylinski: 11:38

All of the above or any of the above, pick whichever angle you would like.

Aaron Chasan: 11:42

It kind of like all starts with culture. It's like the thing that leads to wellness. I kind of think about it. Like you know, maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Manya Chylinski: 11:50

Yes.

Aaron Chasan: 11:51

That first stage. If I'm going to use like a hierarchy of needs kind of framework would be I need the basic ones to be met, so kind of like what I mentioned before, like I need a manager who's not toxic and I need Tom, that's reasonable and I need to feel good with my base situation and all of those things are like culture things.

Manya Chylinski: 12:10

Yes.

Aaron Chasan: 12:10

Then after that there are these extra systems and cool benefits that might help me, and that doesn't really matter if you haven't gotten the first thing right and haven't gotten your culture right, and so, like culture is, I think, absolutely critical to getting any of this stuff right, and that kind of starts with leaders and setting the right example and demanding reasonable things from your people.

Manya Chylinski: 12:34

Right. Who knew how important Maslow's hierarchy of needs was going to be when we were studying that in Psych 101?

Aaron Chasan: 12:42

Yeah, back in my junior year of high school.

Manya Chylinski: 12:52

Exactly Now. I feel it keeps coming back to me in different ways. When you're thinking about that, how can organizations really be supportive of these kind of relationships and building that strong culture in their organizations?

Aaron Chasan: 13:05

Yeah, so kind of two ways, I think organization or two things organizations would need to think about. The first is being supportive of it, kind of abstractly, in the way that you have your culture, and then also specific programs and systems and initiatives around that. So, abstractly, I think some organizations need to overcome the mindset that like connectivity can be bad. If I'm really close with somebody, maybe I'm wasting my time pinging them all day, or maybe I'm telling them how much I'm like, how much of a raise I'm getting, and so then they are going to use that against the company and like that's a whole other thing. Like I think salary transparency is super important. But anyways, I think that they need to overcome those ideas which in my opinion are pretty antiquated. And then they should also start setting up systems for getting folks connected.

Aaron Chasan: 13:49

If you have a hybrid company or remote company in particular, it's a lot harder for spontaneous connection to happen. You don't run into people, you literally don't, and yeah, or at least not as often, and so that's kind of why I built my company is to create these like an initiative like that, a program like that, to solve for that. And companies obviously can do, can like work with others like mine that have these initiatives set up to foster connectivity and to build those spontaneous interactions back, or or they can do it themselves. It's easy to start matching people up randomly or, you know when a new hire starts, introduce them to five people at the company that you think that they get along with, and so being intentional about creating opportunities for connection is what companies need to do.

Manya Chylinski: 14:36

And you said the word intentional. I think it is. You do or don't pay attention to your culture, but you will have a company culture, so you might want to think about it and be intentional so that you're building one that's actually supportive for your organization and for your people. What kind of objections do you get when you're sort of talking about the work that you do? People tell you we don't need this at this company.

Aaron Chasan: 15:02

Sometimes, most of the time, I'm not talking to those kinds of companies, to be honest. Hopefully I haven't gotten to a conversation with them because it probably isn't a super worthwhile use of both of our time, but it does happen. Specifically companies that are going through layoffs. A lot of the time they will say, like if we just had a layoff, it doesn't feel good to create, like a wellness program because it feels like trivializing this, like big situation. That's not how I feel, but I get that perspective and they also will say like we just had layoffs.

Aaron Chasan: 15:37

It's not really a bad thing if people feel isolated and leave. Just means we don't have to pay them severance, which obviously is a bummer.

Manya Chylinski: 15:45

For many, many reasons.

Aaron Chasan: 15:47

For many, many reasons and I think that that kind of overlooks the importance of like network health and what it means when people leave and obviously cost to acquire an employee. That feels pretty short sighted to me, but that is one of the objections we get.

Manya Chylinski: 16:00

Absolutely and interesting to think about the concept of layoffs and that might not be the time to be talking about this. To me, it feels like that's exactly the time to be talking about this.

Aaron Chasan: 16:13

Yeah, you've just really severed your whole network. Like you need to now build these connections again.

Manya Chylinski: 16:19

Exactly, and you need to rebuild the connections. Oh, my goodness, you need to rebuild the connections, oh my goodness. So you have created a program for this to help companies with this. What are some other, I don't know, maybe innovative or interesting strategies that businesses could be thinking about to be supportive of friendships in their organization?

Aaron Chasan: 16:41

Good question. So yeah, if you're not going to work with a company that can do connectivity like ours or the others in the space, there are a few options. One would be like creating your own program. It's like that's like possible, especially if you're doing it randomly.

Aaron Chasan: 16:55

Another kind of cool one that I heard yesterday or the day before a friend of mine sent me this podcast from Adam Grant talking about just talking about loneliness at work, and he was like I think you'll find this interesting. Obviously, one of the ideas that he mentioned, which was his kind of like out there idea, was to create like dyads, or pairs of people at work. When you start, that person kind of like has the same or a similar role to you and you are both like kind of doing the same job, which is cool because if one of you has to take vacation then it's really easy to cover. So that creates like ease and it creates the support system, which is really cool for resilience and for wellness and obviously it creates connection because you're like really in it together, right, I think it's a pretty cool idea, just like we pair people up and they're, they are buddies and they do the same thing.

Aaron Chasan: 17:48

I know a lot of organizations won't go for that. It feels like twice the amount of resources for one role or one amount of output, right, I'm not sure I would have to see, like what the actual results would be, but I would be curious if they got done twice as much work, or two and a half times as much work, because when they run into a problem. They just ask each other about it and work through it, right? So I think that would be a pretty cool idea, just doubling up, okay.

Manya Chylinski: 18:13

I like the sound of that. Now I'm also thinking about wellness in general and thinking about in an organization and how important it is to be inclusive of all of the different types of people in your organization and address their diverse needs. How does what might be some challenges with building friendships at work whether it's an official program or working with a company like yours in making sure that we do that equitably?

Aaron Chasan: 18:43

Yeah, well, one of the challenges that I was acutely aware of when I was building my company Thred was we match people based on shared interests. That's kind of like how it works, because we think that when you have something in common, you're just naturally more likely to get along with that person, and if you can figure out what you have in common, it makes that conversation really easy. It makes it easier to bond quickly. Now, something I was really concerned about was what if our algorithm has bias? Like what if people who like sailing are just straight white, rich men and we're just matching people up who are similar, not just in their interest, but in, like their background? So that's like something that I have been really concerned about.

Aaron Chasan: 19:26

Luckily, the algorithm doesn't really do that. It does create, like, diverse connections, which are great, but that's one of the things that I find concerning when you build things like this, you need to address that there might be bias that you've accidentally created. Right, if you are matching people up and you're not doing it fully randomly, are you matching them? People who have similar last names? I hope not. Maybe you do Things like that, and then I think the other thing that's important to consider is some of the access or some of the topics that are related to diversity and accessibility that don't get mentioned as much. Specifically, ability, I think, is often overlooked, and so a lot of companies will do like wellness challenges, which are like walking challenges.

Manya Chylinski: 20:10

Yes.

Aaron Chasan: 20:10

And that's all well and good. People do like those and they do help. I think like, ideally, any sort of wellness initiative or friendship initiative or whatever should be inclusive of everybody inherently. If it's not going to be, you need to think about ways for other people that it's not inclusive for to participate and so, like people who are not able to do a walking challenge, you need to have something else for them.

Aaron Chasan: 20:32

And the other thing that I think is important to consider from this kind of lens is like neurodiversity. Again, you hope that all initiatives are accessible by nature for all neuro types, because you don't know who's neurodivergent necessarily and it can be really daunting to reveal that and scary, and there are a lot of really bad scenarios that have come up from people revealing that sort of thing to a company that uses it in a punitive way. You don't necessarily know who.

Aaron Chasan: 20:59

Yes, might not be neurotypical and see, ideally you make it accessible for everyone. If not, you allow for mechanics that promote accessibility. So opt-outs, additional mechanisms, control and customization are some big ones that just can help pretty broadly, not just folks who might be on the spectrum or not just people who have ADHD, but like in general, if you have lots of opt-out and like customization mechanics involved, then people can make the program what they need it to be.

Manya Chylinski: 21:27

Right, you meet them where they are, and I appreciate what you said is that we don't want to have to get into a position where people have to share what their particular situation is, and because we have seen, we know that there can be stigma, there can be other repercussions to admitting something like that in a workplace. Whether or not there should be is another question, but we know that there are. Well, it's good to hear that you have been so thoughtful in thinking about building these connections and making sure that the algorithm is as inclusive as it can be. So we're just getting up at the end of our time and I would love for you to share a little bit more about your company and what you do and how you got interested in it.

Aaron Chasan: 22:12

So how I got interested in it kind of comes back to our connection, ernst Young. So I was a people advisory services consultant at EY before I left to start Thred and the work that I did before leaving was future of work projects. So who's going back to the office how often? How do you make those decisions? What's fair? And one of the big takeaways from these brainstorming sessions around this was clients were really concerned about being socially connected to their colleagues and really concerned that their teams would not be connected and they would leave because of that. That's when the light bulb went off and that's when I decided to pursue it. So that's kind of the story around Thread. And then, in terms of what we actually do, we create connections for co-workers based on shared interests and I kind of talked about why we do that already. It's like a lot stickier if you have something in common with somebody. So we create those connections and then we also measure the impact of that work pretty diligently with network analysis. So we want to know who needs this support, who is isolated, who is an influencer, who is a bridge that's holding parts of the network together and like how has this program mitigated risks or created cool opportunities for connection and so that's kind of like the two parts of it is solving the problem and making sure that we know that it is solved.

Manya Chylinski: 23:33

Right. Well, thank you for sharing that, and I am so intrigued by the network analysis piece and I just was thinking in my head back to the conversation with people who might have had layoffs and how the network grows and you could get rid of someone who is actually a bridge and someone who's really important to the network. Not that I'm saying that's how companies need to be deciding who they're laying off, but just so curious how you could really crumble the culture and the connections if you're not really paying attention to these relationships.

Aaron Chasan: 24:08

Right, and it's hard to know without some sort of data, especially if the company is any larger than 50, like, how would you know that someone is a bridge Right? So, yeah, it's important to pay attention to that stuff. And there's also some pretty interesting things that happen when you lose kind of a key node in the network. If that person is super influential or super well-connected and there's another person who's connected to that person and kind of only to that person, imagine, are really tight with this leader and that leader is really influential at the company and so you have influence via that person, then that leader leaves. Now you've lost all of your influence and now you probably influence via that person. Then that leader leaves.

Aaron Chasan: 24:46

Now you've lost all of your influence and now you probably become a turnover risk right so there are some really interesting things that you can look at over time from network graphs and network analysis. I really nerd out about this kind of thing um, I could really nerd out about it too.

Manya Chylinski: 25:00

I'm thank you for sharing that, and it's so intriguing to me to think about the people side and how important those relationships are and how important it is to feel that sense of belonging. So thank you for the work that you do. I think it's really cool and I also think it's really important for all of the reasons that we've talked about, and we're just out of time. But I want to know last question what is giving you hope these days?

Aaron Chasan: 25:27

I think like the general trend that we are on is a good one, not just at work, but like in the world. It feels like over the past few years, people have kind of woken up a bit and stopped thinking in sort of an individual way of just me and how are the decisions I'm going to make affecting me, how is my work affecting me? But also, like, what about everybody else and what about people that don't have the things that I have and don't have the privileges I do? And I find it yeah, I find it like hopeful that people are on this trend of caring about others and building community in a way that I don't know if everyone was pre-pandemic even. It does feel like people care about others more than they have in the past and they want to connect and they want to build community, which is great, and I hope that that continues more and more and people take care of each other.

Manya Chylinski: 26:25

I love that thought and we're going to end. More and more people take care of each other. I love that thought and we're going to end there. Aaron, thank you so much for joining us today.

Aaron Chasan: 26:31

Of course. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Manya Chylinski: 26:41

Thank you for listening. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did. So if you'd like to learn more about me, Manya Chylinski, I work with organizations to help understand how to create environments where people can thrive after difficult life experiences, and I do this through talks and consulting. I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn about resiliency, compassion and trauma-sensitive leadership to build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil. If this is something you want to learn more about, visit my website, www. manyachylinski. com, or email me at manya@ manyachylinski, or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks so much.