Band 5+: Some people think that it’s a good idea to socialise with work colleagues during evenings and weekends. Other people think it’s important to keep working life completely separate from social life. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

Many people believe that it is good to socialize with other employees during off-work hours with their reason being the potential opportunity to bond with colleagues to increase their productivity at work, while plenty others disagree

with this idea, calming people should put a clear demarcation between their work life and their social life as this could potentially limit the time they spend with family and friends. In my view, I agree with the latter.

The main reason why some recommend in socializing with colleagues is because it can create a potential to bond with fellow work mates and to improve their performance at their job by enabling them to collaborate on tasks. This could be better illustrated by

taking the example of the financial company called CBE in Ethiopia. This company regularly organize events on weekends and after hours for colleagues to spend time together. This events created a sense of unity among workers and the company

greatly improved its efficiency and profit in short time because colleagues started to collaborate with each other to finish a task given to them by their managers. This clearly shows how socializing among employees could benefit the organization.

To the contrary, Many others do not agree with the above statement fearing that with out a clear demarcation between work and social life could result in a limited time spent with family and friends. This is true for many employees engaged with after work events frequently. For example, workers hired

in the aforementioned financial company, CBE, despite the success gained at their work they have almost no time to spend with their families and friends on weekends. This greatly reduced their social life because they spend almost all their time with work colleagues. This shows that despite the potential advantages gained from socializing with colleagues

,the potential of destroying personal relationships is quite significant.

In conclusion, Although spending time with colleagues out side of working hours have the advantage of fostering a lasting relationship at work, on the contrary could potentially compromise time spent with family and friends. Hence, I personally do not agree with spending time with my work mates out of working hours as the drawbacks far outweigh the potential benefits.