A common downside of working online jobs is the lack of opportunities to form workplace friendships.
Unlike a traditional office, work from home jobs aren’t as conducive to face-to-face interactions, resulting in fewer chances of small talk with your co-workers.
Here, your co-worker would typically only message you to request updates or to assign tasks.
This difficulty in forming relationships in remote work can make many feel isolated, sometimes decreasing morale and productivity.
However, is having fewer friends in remote work really that bad?
Sure, building a rapport with your co-workers helps, since you’ll spend most of your waking hours with them.
That said, the growing popularity of online work from home jobs forces us to re-evaluate our relationships with our co-workers.
Here are some reasons workplace friendships are disappearing – and why that isn’t such a bad thing.
Why Workers Have Fewer Friends in Remote Work
Here are some factors behind the struggle to form workplace friendships remotely:
Cultural Shifts and Stronger Personal Boundaries
Casual conversations, shared breaks, and spontaneous conversations are a typical part of the traditional workplace.
Not in remote work.
Virtual communication is typically more structured and offers fewer opportunities for spontaneous interactions.
Aside from this, remote work also enables stronger boundaries between work and one’s personal life.
In other words, you’re not forced to hang out with people from work any more than you want to.
The Impact of Technology
Understandably, it’s more difficult to make friends via Zoom and Skype.
While they enable you to communicate in real-time with your boss and co-workers, they lack the nuance and warmth of face-to-face conversations.
In addition, juggling multiple group chats on various platforms can easily lead to communication fatigue.
This significantly reduces your desire to engage with your team outside work, further limiting your opportunities to make friends.
Why Having Fewer Friends in Remote Work Isn’t So Bad
Although having fewer workplace friends can be lonely at first, there are certain upsides. These include:
It Encourages Building More Meaningful Relationships
Traditionally, workplace friendships develop due to proximity and shared experiences.
Although these relationships help you foster a healthy work environment and build your network, they’re sometimes superficial at best.
In contrast, remote work encourages more meaningful interactions between you and your co-workers.
Since this setup lacks spontaneous interactions, remote workers must consciously reach out and connect with their coworkers.
This leads to stronger bonds, as your relationship is built on genuine interest and mutual respect rather than occupying the same space.
So while you might have fewer friends in remote work, the quality of these relationships is often much better.
It Helps You Maintain a Stronger Work-Life Balance
Another benefit of having fewer friends in remote work is it frees you to focus on your personal life.
In an office setup, there’s pressure to join your co-workers when they invite you out after work. This can cut into your already limited time to indulge your hobbies or get much-needed rest.
Aside from this, our priorities also change as we grow older.
When we were young and new at work, we wanted to fit in with the rest of the team.
However, when we have families to take care of, our priorities change drastically.
In remote work, you can dedicate more time to your loved ones than ever before.
It Helps You Be More Productive at Work
On average, workers are only productive for about three hours a day.
Aside from browsing their phones, office-based employees often spend their time discussing non-work-related things with their co-workers.
Fortunately, this isn’t as much of a problem in an online work from home setup.
Removing the compulsion for spontaneous conversations means you can better focus on producing quality work on time.
This allows you to log off on time, so you don’t have to work any more than you need to.
Workplace Friendships Can Lead to Cliquishness
Typically, it’s much easier for employees to make friends within their departments since they interact with them the most.
Although this is good for fostering collaboration and a sense of belonging, it could also lead to cliquishness.
Cliques can promote an “Us vs. Them” mentality within your team, leading to difficulties collaborating and potential workplace conflicts.
This can also lead to new members feeling left out, adversely affecting their morale and job satisfaction.
Thankfully, these aren’t common in remote work.
Most online interactions with your department are job-related and everything is documented via instant chat messages and emails – thus curtailing drama that leads to messy office politics.
Having Workplace Friends Can Slow Down Your Career Growth
While it’s true that workplace friendships help you grow your network and career, it can do the opposite as well.
Having friends at work may make you hesitant to leave your current job despite better opportunities elsewhere.
Additionally, some workplaces can get very competitive, causing employees to get suspicious of their coworkers’ intentions when interacting with them.
Thus, one benefit of having fewer friends in remote work is they won’t hold you back from pursuing better career opportunities.
Workplace Friendships Aren’t the Same as True Friendship
People often think being friendly at work is the same as being friends, full stop. This isn’t the case.
A true friend is someone you’re safe and comfortable sharing your full self with -even outside the office.
In contrast, a professional setting requires boundaries that you wouldn’t want to blur.
Yes, co-workers you get along with can make work fun, but that doesn’t mean you should go beyond that. After all, you can’t just share your life’s troubles with them out of the blue.
If you want proof, a 2018 paper argues that the four defining features of friendships (informality, voluntariness, communal norms, and socio-emotional goals) conflict with the four fundamental elements of organizational life (formal roles, involuntary constraints, exchange norms, and instrumental goals).
Does this mean you can’t make genuine friends at work anymore? Absolutely not.
Only, it doesn’t happen as much as we’d like.
Why Can’t We Be Friends?
Many are concerned that remote work’s growing popularity could spell the end of workplace friendships.
However, as the points above show, having fewer friends in remote work may not be so bad.
Decentering work from our lives enables us to seek friendships outside of it, which leads to genuine and more meaningful relationships.
Again, this doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with your remote co-workers. You just need to set stronger boundaries between work and your personal life so you can enjoy the latter more.
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