Modern ways of working are building a sense of isolation. A Friday-night drink can help, but it has its risk, writes Stephen Wynne Jones.

It's that time of the week. Friday, 6 p.m. The telephone is still ringing and the in box is overflowing with undone to-dos. You glance out of the window. Rain. Again. The call goes up. "Fancy a pint?" Great: another evening in the company of Fitzy from accounts, Boring Brigid and that young guy whose name nobody can remember. It's OK, you say, I think I'll pass; besides, I hear Bertie's on The Late Late Show.

What's gone wrong? Work is meant to be a social experience: we spend so much time in the office that it has been where we've made many of our friends. But these days, according to one recent survey, more than one in six of us feels we have no friends at work: they're just colleagues, people we never see outside the office. More than a third of us socialise with them barely more than once a year - the Christmas party, in other words.

It seems that computers are to blame. Why bother talking to John from IT when you can send him a quick e-mail? "Technology clearly has an impact on workplace friendships," says Janet McGlaughlin of Pertemps, the UK-based recruitment firm that conducted the survey, polling 500 commercial and industrial workers. "Whereas before you might have been sitting opposite a colleague, now you're sitting opposite a machine. And, depending on the size and capabilities of that machine, you may find yourself in your own little world. There isn't a natural interaction."

Dubbed Greta Garbo syndrome, after the actress who famously wanted to be alone, workplace isolation is becoming part of the daily routine, leading to increased stress and psychological fatigue.

So could the simple office pint be good for your health? "You need to have those down times, when you can say, all right, we're not in work now, let's relax," says McGlaughlin. "And that leads to the creation of important support mechanisms. You can put a full stop on the end of a bad week and start afresh on Monday morning. By missing out on that interaction you end up chewing this tension over through the weekend and dragging it into the next week, increasing stress."

So nature's social lubricant can help. "If you can be more relaxed and informal with those you work with in a social context, such as the pub, barriers are removed and you can work as a more effective team around the office, but, of course, personal responsibility is also important," says McGlaughlin.

Whatever the stress levels of Irish employees, it isn't reflected in a high level of absenteeism relative to the rest of Europe. Ireland's small businesses lose €172 million a year through absenteeism, according to the Small Firms Association. That equates to almost eight days a worker - far lower than the EU average, of 14.5 days.

However, Dr John Gallagher, an occupational-health physician at Cork University Hospital, suggests that we tend to bottle up our stress, which can harm our well-being, at home as well as at work.

"The main contributing factors to stress in the workplace are in relation to work 'content' or work 'context'," he says. "It's important to remember that work-related stress is a perception of an imbalance. The individual's own resources cannot meet the demands placed on them. A social atmosphere allows you to do some 'debriefing'."

And the Friday-night drink can facilitate the debriefing, if done sensibly. "It all comes down to responsible use of alcohol. It's more the social milieu than the actual drink itself," says Gallagher. "If people can go for a drink for an hour, exchange information, debrief and leave, there wouldn't be any major issue. My feeling is that, if used responsibly, it can certainly perform a function, but there's always a risk attached in certain situations."

So where does stress management end and personal responsibility begin? By habitually turning to alcohol we can end up doing more harm than good. Dr Birgit Greiner, an occupational psychologist who co-wrote a 2002 study of drinking habits among San Francisco-based transport workers, suggests that the alcohol culture can become ingrained.

"It can be argued that some workplaces encourage a drinking environment," she says. "It becomes part of the climate in some companies: you have to drink a lot to be acknowledged and fit in with the surroundings. It can end up interfering with productivity, particularly for people who may not be used to this sort of environment."

Greiner also believes that, although the social benefits of a weekly office pint are clear, we need to find other ways to relieve stress.

"Some companies have introduced stress-management programmes, or 'micro breaks', during which people can relax, break away from work for a short period and socialise. New working environments, in places such as call centres, restrict this sort of interaction: there is no time for socialising during work hours. It is partially the responsibility of the company to allow mechanisms to be put in place for dealing internally with this sort of stress. Alcohol does not have to be the only answer."

That suggests it's all about striking a balance, but many people are struggling to find a rhythm in an increasingly hectic world. "There's so much pressure on people to have this 'balance', but what is balance to the individual?" says Janet McGlaughlin. "It's almost like we are being dictated to on how to put a certain equilibrium into our lives. But, by the same token, one person's balance can be another's imbalance. It's not a theory you can learn from a book."

Gallagher agrees. "The difficulty is often that people aren't leaving the work behind them when they get home. Part of the advice I would often give is to set up a boundary between work life and home life. I'm not necessarily suggesting whether they should make that boundary the pub, but other activities outside work, such as going to the gym or bowling, can have an equivalent effect."

So, fancy a pint? Sure, but let's make it just the one. And bring along that young guy whose name nobody can remember. I don't think I've spoken to him much.