“Impact of demographic characteristics of personnel on the quality of employee relationships: The case of Poland”

This research paper fills a significant gap in the literature in the field of the influence of demographic characteristics of employees on the quality of interpersonal relationships at work (QR). There are no comprehensive research results concerning this problem. The research objective is to describe how selected characteristics of employees (sex, age, education, type of job, and length of service) influence QR. This goal was achieved through the use of survey methods (online, direct and auditory) conducted in 2018 and 2019 on the sample of 1,336 active employees in Poland. The data was analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics application. The findings prove that the quality of interpersonal relationships at work is differentiated by sex (men tend to rate the quality of relationships higher as compared to women), age (respondents belonging to younger groups tend to rate the quality of relationships higher as compared to older respondents), education (respondents with higher education tend to rate the quality of relationships higher as compared to less educated respondents), and type of job (managers tend to rate the quality of relationships higher as compared to the blue-collar workers). It was not possible to determine explicit trends in assessing the quality of relationships depending on the term of work. According to obtained results, special attention should be paid to the following categories of staff: women, older, less educated and blue-collar employees.


INTRODUCTION
The quality of interpersonal relationships at work (QR) is very important not only for functioning of employees themselves, but also their surroundings (e.g. members of their families) and an organization itself (Jędrzejczak-Gas &Wyrwa, 2020). This construct has an extraordinarily biased character and depends on numerous determinants, including individual and situational (divided into organizational and non-organization). One of the determinants most frequently considered in the literature on personnel management and QR are sex, age, education, length of service and type of job. The first three are individual and the last two are organizational determinants (see e.g. Tschan et al., 2004;Bowler & Brass, 2006;LePine et al., 2012;Robak, 2017;Vasilyeva et al., 2018). However, there is no comprehensive research on the influence of the variables on the quality of interpersonal relationships between employees. What is more, the influence of the variables is often understood intuitively as a recognized, but not confirmed or barely examined empirically paradigm. For instance, as Heaphy indicates (2009), women engage in relationships more emotionally as compared to men, and they are less direct in interaction as compared

LITERATURE REVIEW
Each human activity is grounded in interpersonal relationships (Mainela, 2007). An organization is the best place to incubate such relationships because employees are close to each other and interact a lot (Jehn et al., 2014). The relationship at work combines two dimensions, namely task-related and interpersonal (LePine et al., 2012). The first one predominates and focuses on proper performance of tasks (LePine et al., 2012). Thus, literature on work relationships focuses on the task-related component. The interpersonal component focuses on interpersonal relationships between employees. The deeper is this relationship, the closer become the parties (Jehn et al., 2014). The interpersonal component means that this relationship can take a form of verbal (e.g., conversation), para-verbal (e.g., exclamation of surprise), non-verbal (e.g., a smile) and physical (e.g., touching) communication (Laschober et al., 2012).
Interpersonal relationships have a dichotomous character and, thus, they can be good (positive, of high quality) or bad (negative, of low quality). They rarely assumed extreme forms, but more often constitute a certain resultant of good-bad continuum (thus, relationships can be graded). Due to dominant interest in the literature in the positive character of the relationships, it seems much easier to qualify relationships as good than deem the same bad ( The literature on the subject does not use a uniform definition of interpersonal relationships at work (see Table 1). What is more, deliberations of numerous authors are often explicitly general in nature (Glińska-Neweś, 2017). However, it is possible to indicate certain symptoms of good or bad relationships. The good symptoms are associated, among others, with greater honesty, trust, closeness, satisfaction and involvement, more often include emotions (not only positive, but also negative), interactions and communications among employees, are characterized by helping behaviors towards co-workers, they last long and often extend outside the sphere of work and are even identified with friendship. Low quality relationships are full of suspiciousness and do not give any satisfaction, they include little emotion or are dominated by negative emotions, interactions are short-term and limited to necessary minimum, they are character- The quality of interpersonal relationships at work is a barely examined and described issue, especially in the context of Polish cultural conditions. This may result, among others, from deficiency of instruments (scales) for measuring of the quality. This can be derived from the lack of a comprehensive list of variables identified for the QR measurement.
A scale adapted to Polish conditions was proposed by Szostek (2019), who identified four categories of variables for measuring the quality of relation-ships at work, such as: 1) organizational atmosphere, 2) interpersonal bonds, 3) methods of building of interpersonal relationships, and 4) distance resulting from management style. Moreover, the author pointed out two dimensions of interpersonal relationships at work, i.e.: 1) determinants vs. effects of QR (some of the variables are both determinants and effects, e.g. time spend together), 2) organizational (activities undertaken by an organization, e.g. corporate events) vs. individual manifestations (activities undertaken by an employee, e.g. helping co-workers by a move).
The gaps in the literature as identified and shown above made it possible to set the research objective, which is to describe how selected characteristics of employees (sex, age, education, type of job, and length of service) influence the quality of interpersonal relationships at work.

DATA AND METHODOLOGY
The study was conducted in 2018 and 2019 using survey methods (online, direct and auditory). The respondents were Polish employees, and invitations for participation in the study were sent to: • nearly 2.5 thousand commune offices in Poland; • 200 enterprises mentioned in the ranking list of Wprost weekly 1 (200 largest enterprises in 2017);  Table 2 includes the characteristics of the respondents. Source Definition Gabarro (1990, p. 8) Interpersonal relationship that is task-based, nontrivial, and of continuing duration. Storbacka et al. (1994) QR is identified with its strength of links between the parties that lead to satisfaction and commitment. Hinde (1997, p. 37) A series of interactions between two people, involving interchanges over an extended period of time. Sherony and Green (2002) It is the level of mutual respect, trust and sense of duty between employees.
McGinn and History (2009, p. 265) Quality of relationship entails a pervasive, intentional, and constructive focus on mutual support and on members as individuals.
McCauley (2012, p. 9) Sequence of interactions between two people that involves some degree of mutuality, in that the behavior of one member takes some account of the behavior of the other. The evaluation of the co-workers' actions, their feelings and attitudes, and the relationship's results. Tepper and Almeda (2012) The evaluation of how far a relationship is based on reciprocity. Atrek et al. (2014) The degree to which a relationship meets the co-workers' expectations, needs and aspirations.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The analysis of data indicates that the respondents tended to assess the quality of interpersonal relationships in their place of work really high (18.3% of the total statements for "strongly disagree" and "somewhat disagree", and 63.3% for "strongly agree" and "somewhat agree") (see Figure 1). Further, the analysis covered the development of the quality depending on selected demographic variables characterizing the respondents.

The quality of relationships vs. a respondent's gender
From the analysis of the data presented in Figure  2, it can be seen that the quality of relationships at work is assessed as slightly higher by men as compared to women (men often tended to assess the

The quality of relationships vs. a respondent's age
The youngest group of respondents (up to 35 years) was characterized by the highest quality of interpersonal relationships at work as compared to the remaining two age groups (up to 55 and 75 years). This is manifested in the lowest share of negative and neutral answers provided and highest share of positive answers in the group of respondents. On the other hand, the oldest group of respondents was characterized by the lowest quality of relationships (see Figure 3).

The quality of relationships vs. a respondent's education
The respondents' education also differentiated their assessments of the quality of interpersonal relationships at work. The higher the education, the more positive assessments. On the other hand, the group of respondents with the lowest education tended to assess the quality more negatively. This is evidenced by both the share of negative and neutral answers provided, as well as positive an-

The quality of relationships vs. a respondent's type of job
Respondents holding executive posts tended to assess the quality of relationships at work the highest (this is manifested by the lowest share of negative and neutral answers and the highest share of pos- 3 For the purposes of analyses and better depiction of the relationships, similar categories of education were combined, which resulted in three following categories: none and basic, vocational and secondary, higher. itive answers). On the other hand, workers holding physical positions of those connected with physical work assessed the quality as lowest (see Figure 5).

The quality of relationships vs. a respondent's length of service
In the case of particular groups of respondents selected due to their length of service at a given place  of work, it is hard to indicate clearly expressed trends in their assessment of the quality of interpersonal relationships at work. It is true that answers provided in particular groups are differentiated, but one cannot state it clearly that the quality increases or decreases depending on the length of service. For example, the group of workers with the shortest length of service tended to provide negative answers more frequently than in the case of the other groups, however, this group also tended to assess the relationships as positive more frequently (see Figure 6).
It should be noted that the described differences in assessing the quality of interpersonal relationships at work with respect to selected demographic var-iables (sex, age, education, type of job and length of service) proved statistically significant, which is manifested by values of Pearson's chi-square coefficients shown in Table 3.

CONCLUSION
The paper develops scientific research in the field of assessing the impact of employees' demographic characteristics on the quality of interpersonal relationships at work. The research aims to describe how selected characteristics of employees (sex, age, education, type of job, and length of service) influence the quality of interpersonal relationships.
The findings prove that the quality of interpersonal relationships at work is differentiated as follows: 1) by sex -men tend to assess the quality of relationships higher as compared to women); 2) by age -respondents belonging to younger groups tend to rate the quality of relationships higher as compared to older respondents); 3) by education -respondents with higher education tend to rate the quality of relationships higher as compared to less educated respondents, 4) by occupation -respondents holding managerial positions tended to assess the quality of the relationships higher as compared to respondents holding low-level positions; 5) by length of service (term of work) -indications were diversified in par-  ticular groups selected with respect to the length of service; however, it was not possible to determine clearly expressed trends in assessing the quality of relationships depending on the length of service.
Based on the abovementioned, human resource managers (HRM) should systematically monitor the quality of interpersonal relationships between employees and actively shape this quality considering demographic characteristics of the staff. According to research results, special attention should be paid to the following categories of employees: women, older, less educated and blue-collar employees.

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
This study has some limitations such as: • Certain target audience of respondents, which makes results not entirely objective.
• Limited anonymity caused, in particular, by the use of direct survey methods (a direct and auditory questionnaire). This could affect the reliability of the study, given its sensitive subject (the quality of relationships at work). Therefore, an online survey was additionally used (approx. 80% of selected data).
• The quantitative nature of the study, which allowed only empirical confirmation of the influence of selected demographic variables on QR.
Any future research should be enriched with qualitative methods (e.g. observations or focus group interviews) that will allow identifying the determinants of differences in the quality of relationships at work by analyzing demographic characteristics of employees. It is also worth trying to conduct a quantitative study on a representative sample, which will allow generalizing the results.