If you were a Girl Scout, you probably sang that famous song about friendship, maybe while sitting around a campfire with your troop: âMake new friends, but keep the old; One is silver, the other is gold.â This idea applies to work friends, too. Liking your colleagues makes it more fun to go to the officeâor log on to a video call âand contributes to motivation, engagement, and stamina, which you need for a long, rewarding career. Many people make their closest friends through work, particularly at the start of a career; some people even find spouses on the job! But enjoying your work friends can make the thought of changing jobs feel threateningâeven in a case where you know itâs time to go.
In fact, in a recent survey conducted by author and friendship expert Shasta Nelson, 30% of respondents said their greatest fear about making friends at work was that it âhurts too much to lose a friendship after the job ends.â While job hopping seems to be slowing down a bit, likely because âthe hot post-pandemic demand for labor has somewhat subsided,â as this article in Business Insider notes, the old-fashioned idea of staying in a job for life is largely a thing of the past. In fact, as this same article notes, âthere were 3.5 million quits in November 2023, the most recent month with data.â This is the lowest number of quits since February 2021, but still not nothing. And as entirely new fields of work continue to evolve, leaving a current job for a new opportunity elsewhere will remain a smart career choice for many.
Regardless of whether you intend to change jobs soon or not, making strong connections at work is a good idea. And retaining at least some of these connections is valuable, both personally and professionally. The good news is, you can maintain work friends, even if you exit the company. As Nelson wrote about her survey in a post on the Harvard Business Review, âWhile I have heard hundreds of stories about people feeling surprised and hurt by friendships that didnât survive the workplace, in that same survey, more than 61% of respondents claimed to still be close to a best friend from a previous job.â
So how can you take new (jobs) and keep the old (friends)? Itâs possible; but it takes a little, well . . .work.
See the connection as the compelling âwhyâ
With work-based friendships, itâs easy to assume that you lack a real âreasonâ to stay connected once you no longer share an employer. After all, youâre no longer teaming up on reports, or getting together to vent about a difficult boss.
One key to staying in touch is reframing the friendship as being valuable in and of itself.
There are plenty of good reasons to stay in touch with former colleagues, starting with the fact that itâs fun to be with people you like, and interesting to hear about their lives. You might have coffee with someone you know through a previous job or board work and discover that sheâs now working in healthcare. Suddenly, youâre learning about drone delivery of vaccines to remote areas in need. Just through chatting, youâve expanded your knowledge of the world around you.
Former colleagues also can be helpful professionally; new options often come from people you know. Maintaining a wide social circle can translate into more opportunities. Even if youâre leaving your job because of a great role elsewhere now, your current colleagues may be invaluable in the future, providing leads or channeling consulting or freelance work your way, if youâre taking a more independent career turn.
âI have gotten a ton of work from people I worked with who stayed friends,â says Sara Clemence, a former staff editor at The Wall Street Journal, Travel & Leisure and other New York-based publications. When Clemence left her last full time role to try freelancing, her long-established work connections helped make it possible. âThey went to different companies and different publications. One friend from the Wall Street Journal went to Apple and needed writing help. Another went to GQ, and so I did some work with him.â
Former colleagues also can be valuable mentors and advisors, or sit on your personal âboard of directors.â (Check out this post on building a personal board of directors). Your network is also a resource you can tap to help others. If you worked at BCG in the past, say, and youâre mentoring a college grad seeking a consulting job, you could leverage your former connections there for her, learning about opportunities or even arranging an informational interview. While people can always do LinkedIn searches to find potential opportunities, itâs often better to go via a âwarm lead,â as in someone you actually know, with whom you have remained in touch.
Find a new shared activity and make it recurring
Work friendships, like school friendships, often develop easily and organically because of the daily interaction and conversation about shared interests. Once you leave, you donât have that built-in together time. Even if you do get together on occasion and have a great time, without consistent interaction, you may find that a once-valuable friendship fades away.
Instead of letting that relationship peter out, re-create regular interaction with a former colleague to help ensure the relationship lasts. Nelson suggests making a regular date, like a monthly lunch, Zoom call, or phone check-in. You might schedule a regular walk in the park, a private Slack channel for daily updates, or Friday afternoon cocktails. âI have two super close friends from Conde Nast who I used to have lunch with all the time. Thatâs still kind of our thing, having regular lunches,â says Clemence. âSometimes we invite someone else, like a special guest.â This special guest can be a mutual former colleague you like and with whom you want to remain connected.
Or you could take a regular hike, as a group of former UCLA professors and other friends do. A half-dozen women and men, some who are still working and some who have retired from teaching but are still active professionally in other ways, meet on Mondays and Thursdays at 9am to hike in Will Rogers State Park in Los Angeles. Seeing each other on the trail meets a new needâthe need to stay active and healthy. By setting a recurring date, people can just show up at the trail, no planning needed.
One of the regulars, Doris Baizley, 78, a playwright who currently teaches at Loyola Marymount College, joined the group through a friend. She has been walking with the members for somewhere, âbetween 10 and 20 years.â She says apart from the exercise, which is necessary for mental and physical health, âThere are some mornings that I wake up and think, âOh, Iâm so glad Iâm walking this morning, because we can talk.â I donât know what weâll be talking about, but it will definitely be something funny or interesting. Itâs just good to be in touch with people, and not only with your best friends. Itâs being part of the bigger world.â
Baizley says she has discovered surprisingly commonalities with other members of the group. âIt turns out that two of us graduated from the same college in the same year. Two others found out that their grandmothers were from the same tiny town in Illinois. This is the kind of thing that happens with people you donât really know that well; there can be amazing things that you have in common.â
The group nature also helps keep it going; even if one person is traveling or ill, the hike will happen because others show up. You have to be genuinely interested in someone to merit maintaining a relationship, but a group activity can help you remain connected even to former colleagues who werenât all that close. âIf you want to reach out, itâs a little awkward to reach out to someone you havenât talked to, five years later, for a connection or a recommendation,â says Clemence. âItâs more natural if youâve stayed loosely connected.â
Donât be afraid to ask
Nelson cautions against worrying about who is doing the asking. Friendships donât operate on a quid-proâquo basis; if you reach out and suggest an outing this month, that doesnât mean your friend must take the lead next month for the friendship to be real. Donât be afraid to be the one making more effort to keep it going. Peopleâs social skills and social initiative vary, and as Nelson puts it, âA relationship doesnât require that both people take turns initiating; it only requires that both people spend time together in a positive and meaningful way.â
Remember that friendships can still develop after youâve left
One last reason to stay in touch: the relationship may evolve in the future. âI have a friend I got closer to after we stopped working together,â says Clemence. âShe was an editorial assistant when I was an editor. We were on different levels, so we werenât that tight. But we stayed lightly in touch and saw each other concessionally for a group lunch. We found ourselves at the same stage a few years later where we were both freelancing and trying to take our careers to the next level. We really bonded over that. We realized how much more we have in common than we thought. Then we set up a monthly call.â
Even companies are doing it
Prior work relationships are so valuable that some companies are promoting them. Firms like McKinsey, which stand to get revenue from former employees, have been nurturing an alumni network for years. Emma Sinclair founded the Enterprise Alumni platform specifically because thereâs been so much demand from businesses for maintaining these relationships.
Make (some) new friends but keep (some of) the old
Of course, there are limits to how many friendships one can maintainâand might want to. The number of meaningful contacts people can realistically sustain has long been believed to be about 150. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, the scientist after whom âDunbarâs Numberâ is named, came up with the social brain hypothesis, which postulates, among other things, that a humanâs large brain size can accommodate only a certain number of meaningful relationships.
As this article from BBC explains, âAccording to Dunbar and many researchers he influenced, this rule of 150 remains true for early hunter-gatherer societies as well as a surprising array of modern groupings: offices, communes, factories, residential campsites, military organizations, 11th Century English villages, even Christmas card lists. Exceed 150, and a network is unlikely to last long or cohere well.â
Dunbarâs number has some nuance: people can generally have five very close friends/loved ones, 15 good friends, 50 looser friendships, 500 acquaintances and 1500 people they can recognize. While close friendships improve health and wellbeing, so-called âweak tiesâ also improve happiness and mental health. As this article posted on the American Psychological Association explains, âThese connections with acquaintancesâa work friend you bump into once a week, the pet store employee who remembers your catâcan be surprisingly sustaining.â
Keeping in touch with former colleagues, whether close friends or weak ties, can pay off personally and professionally, helping safeguard your health and wellbeingâand your career.