Talk about beer and sports on social media, and you're less likely to get laid off.

And lunch.

And baseball: https://twitter.com/AdamMGrant/status/530028822432088064

The surprising finding:

[The takeaway about] social communication is surprising because I deliberately [chose to look at] an industry (consulting) where you can measure an employee’s value to the firm very clearly. In the end, how much money you bring into the firm should be the ultimate value…. But in fact, what I found is that social communication has bigger power than objective performance [measures] in predicting whether individuals were laid off during the recession.

I’m not saying that people should necessarily just stop working and [use social media] all the time. But perhaps there’s a value that social communication can provide that we don’t see. Perhaps this person is a really good team player, and people really enjoy working with this person. Maybe he did not bill directly, but he enabled his co-workers or his colleagues to do a better job. Perhaps that’s one reason. Or you can think of the traditional old boys’ club where people who tend to schmooze a lot get [ahead].