Have you ever seen the ’80s teen angst comedy The Breakfast Club, in which Molly Ringwald, playing the popular Claire Standish, spends a Saturday in detention with a handful of school misfits—and emerges with enduring, important friendships? The moral of the story, from a workplace perspective? Spending time together turns strangers into friends.
In the old office-based world, work friendships and even best friendships, often developed through a similar sort of mandatory togetherness. Going to the office meant daily, unplanned interactions and conversations—over lunch, before meetings, or in the breakroom—leading to the discovery of shared interests and goals, and paving the way for real bonds to form.
But in today’s often-hybrid or remote environment, waiting for a best work buddy to develop organically while grabbing a coffee from the kitchen or commiserating in the hallway after a frustrating meeting could mean, well . . . a very long wait, and a feeling of isolation during the work day. Even those who want a best work buddy may find it hard to make one. As this Korn Ferry briefing on workplace friendships puts it, “Despite return-to-office mandates, people are showing up fewer than three days a week, on average, making managers and HR struggle with scheduling even the simplest buddy-making events. And when they do work together at the office, most people are too engrossed in their emails or social media to talk to one another.”
These social impediments exist at a time when work-based friendships may be more important than ever. Our epidemic of isolation and loneliness is continuing. As a 2024 American Psychiatric Association poll shows, one-third of adults in the U.S. say they feel lonely at least once a week; one in 10 say they feel lonely every day. A third of younger adults—those at the start of their careers—say they feel lonely every day or several times a week.
Why work friends matter for individuals
When it comes to career success, work friends are not just a “nice to have.” They are often a critical part of rising and thriving. Work friendships increase stamina and enjoyment on the job. Knowing people in other departments often helps you get things done. As Gallup research has repeatedly shown, having even one real friend at work is key to engagement and accomplishment on the job.
Friendships are also important for our mental health. Since we spend most of our waking hours on the job, one of the best ways to combat loneliness is to socialize with peers and colleagues. In our post-pandemic world, these work-based relationships have taken on a new urgency for many. As a 2022 Gallup post explains, the trauma and isolation of the pandemic made many people lean on work friends in new ways. For some, work friends helped preserve their mental health during the ongoing stress, particularly those working in healthcare, education or emergency response. For others, a work buddy helped them stay accountable and connected while working from home. This peer has remained critical to many remote workers today.
Another benefit of work-based friends? You can take them with you after you leave the job. As this column has noted before, former work friends can remain important sources of information, connection, and just plain fun. Former colleagues can connect you to valuable job leads during a future search, and “can be valuable mentors and advisors, or sit on your personal ‘board of directors.’”
Why work friends matter for leaders
Happy, engaged, socially connected employees are important for employers too. For one thing, having a socially connected staff has been shown to boost the bottom line. As researchers put it, “Gallup data indicate that having a best friend at work is strongly linked to business outcomes, including profitability, safety, inventory control and retention.”
There have been many studies on the myriad benefits of feeling that one’s work matters, either to the wider world or to one’s employer or team. As this post from Randstad puts it, meaningful work friendships can contribute to that sense of meaning. “Having valuable workplace friendships can give people a sense of belonging and purpose, empowering us to be productive, profitable and engaged at work—to a significant degree.” The post goes on to cite Gallup research showing that people who say they have a best friend at work are seven times more engaged than those who don’t.
Finally, creating ways for employees to connect with those across the organization can ease collaboration and spur creativity. As Jon Clifton, CEO of Gallup, wrote in a Harvard Business Review article, getting employees together for “jam sessions,” much like those used by musicians, spurs creativity. “The joy is in working together to produce magic.“
So how can you as a leader or individual contributor increase the likelihood of work-based buddies? Try these three tips.
Three Tips for Making Friends at Work
Put down the phone
Our phones are always with us, and unfortunately, have become the default go-to the minute we feel any pang of discomfort or boredom. But once you pick up your phone, you’re no longer really “in” the same room with those around you. Usually, they’ll turn to their screens, too. Gone is a chance to turn a colleague into a friend.
“Phubbing”—ignoring a person right in front of you in favor of your phone—prevents new potential friendships from forming. It also has been shown to damage those relationships we already have, and hurt other people’s feelings. This post on the Greater Good Science Center shares a slew of studies showing the harmful effects of phubbing, and the importance of breaking the habit. “When someone’s eyes wander, we intuitively know what brain studies also show: The mind is wandering. We feel unheard, disrespected, disregarded,” author Emma Seppela writes. Putting down the phone can free up a huge amount of time to do that standby friend-making activity: chat.
Look for common interests and make it easy for employees to do so, too
One easy way to find common interests with colleagues is to join a club or interest-based group your company hosts or co-sponsors. Many companies have regular volunteering outings, for example, a great way to do something meaningful with your colleagues and to meet people from outside your division and across the company hierarchy.
As a leader, you can create interest-based groups and clubs or virtual clubs and encourage employees to join. One idea that came out of the pandemic is virtual book clubs, an easy group to organize and run online. Employees might bond over a cooking club, a game club, or even a movie night.
Most companies above a certain scale now have employee resource groups (ERG), and as this post in Forbes explains, these employee-led groups can be a great way to involve many people in activities that can make a difference, and research shows that “the groups are more likely to foster community building compared to other efforts.” Finally, think about the actual space where employees come together, if they ever do. People need places to convene in order to bond. You might try moving desks closer together and bringing people in for on-site meetings, lunches or social hours. Or, as evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar told Korn Ferry, “You can’t make people be friends—it has to grow organically. But in order to do that, you have to create environments where people stay on-site.
Don’t take a meeting, make a friend
When you have a chance to meet someone new in the course of your workday, consider that an opportunity to make a new friend. Try taking time at the very beginning and end of the meeting to talk about non-work-related interests or to share an interesting anecdote, and see if there is a connection. You might even plan to arrive a few minutes early to facilitate this and/or make sure not schedule another meeting right after that will have you rushing out of there.
When you have that time to chat, remember that honest curiosity and a willingness to share your own interests can go a long way toward building a relationship. Try asking open-ended questions, ones that require elaboration, rather than a “yes” or “no” answer. Follow up with another open-ended question, then offer a related detail from your own life. Rather than seeing the meeting as another item on your to-do list, view it as a chance to expand your social circle.
As Gallup’s Jon Clifton writes, “To ignore friendships is to ignore human nature…Companies do far better to harness the power of this kind of social capital than to fight against it.”