However, many risks are worth the gamble — especially if you put an emphasis on intelligent risks. This LinkedIn Learning course will teach you quite a bit about evaluating risks. You can watch the course below or by clicking here. “To have a friend means to share and to listen, to trust and be trusted, to feel safe and supported, and to be there for each other,” wrote Nelly V. Tacheva, who is a founder and CEO. The key to an effective buddy system is the frequency of the interactions.

In my experience, sometimes the people who have the least in common on paper end up forming how to make friends when you work from home the strongest bonds. As for me, I like building friendships at work, but there is a caveat.

Tips on How to Make Friends When You Work from Home

Nothing says that you need to go out into the real world necessarily to learn how to make friends when you work from home. Sometimes, it’s the easiest and most obvious things that work better than others. Arrive 5 to 10 minutes before a Zoom meeting starts and chat with whoever else shows up. Hang out a little longer with co-workers unless they’re staying put for a private meeting.

But you can have a little hang time with folks without committing to a whole extra meeting. It’s the virtual equivalent of lingering at the conference table to gossip. Kimberly Cummings, a career coach in NYC, advises trying to recreate as many of these casual professional encounters as possible to stay in the loop. He first put together virtual social events, like online happy hours and scavenger hunts, and, starting in late March, added in-person meetups at safe outdoor venues in the Seattle metro area. Tell your new work buddies that you’re looking to meet some new people, and plan a small hangout where you each bring one or two friends from outside of work if possible.

Company

Despite claiming “people are our greatest asset,” too many executives still expect employees to leave their personal lives at the door when they come to work. Yet Gallup data shows that having a best friend at work is strongly linked to business outcomes, including improvements in profitability, safety, inventory control, and employee retention. The author offers four ways managers can create and maintain a friendship-friendly workplace that delivers measurable results. Work friendships fill a very specific role in our lives. They can provide comfort and support in stressful situations and they can also help uplevel our careers. “Our work relationships are unlike any others,” says Lauren Cook, a California-based therapist and career coach. Up to 80% of jobs get filled through personal professional connections.

• At Atlassian, some teams even have a virtual messy-desk faceoff in Slack every week.
• But at a minimum, coworkers need to talk more and email less.
• I don’t know about you, but I have had to be really strategic about creating a personal rhythm since the beginning of the pandemic.
• This will help you connect with them and start forming a friendship.
• “I’m not here to make friends,” says every reality TV star ever and also potentially some of your coworkers.
• Co-workers will be more likely to want to be your friend if you show them you like them by doing things like greeting them warmly, speaking highly of them, and celebrating their success.
• Second, you cannot control what others think of you.