Workplace Friendships – Should You Have Them?
Workplace friendships!
You know, I’ve personally never been a fan of actively making friends through work. Even though I’m an introvert, it’s not the main reason why I never preferred to have work friends. I’m the type who just wants to clock in and out of work with no extracurricular activities involved (including work friends). And I’ve always believed the saying, “don’t eat where you s!” What does that mean? It means you shouldn’t make friends where you depend on your income and livelihood. This usually applies to romantic relationships. But I believe it can apply to friendships as well. So you can tell where my negative stance on work friendships come from!
However with that said, I have to acknowledge the benefits of friendships made in the workplace. I myself have made tons of friends from the places I work, and some are wonderful friends that I still cherish to this day. From the parties and events we attended, to the great advice they have given me, work friends can be awesome to have.
If you want to have work friends, can you have it all? Can you make friends through the workplace without the potential negatives that come with it? That’s what we will be talking about today!
In this post, I’ll go over the things you should know about workplace friendships, both the good and bad. While workplace friendships can be rewarding and fulfilling, you need to also be careful with them to not compromise your work life. We’ll talk all about that here.
Without further ado, let’s get started!
Approach with caution.
When it comes to workplace friendships, the first thing I want you to know is to approach it with caution. To start, workplace friends are not like your typical friends you meet as strangers or even in school. For most friends, if you guys don’t like each other or your friendships drift apart (click here to read why friendships drift apart), you just simply walk away and never see each other again.
However, it’s not that easy with workplace friends. If you have fallout with your coworkers, then unfortunately you still have to see them when you’re at work. This can make things pretty awkward for you and your workers if there is tension between you two. Hence it’s pretty risky to try to make new friends at work, especially if it’s a place you plan on working permanently for a long time.
Also, you need to be extra careful when it involves authority over someone (or vice versa). Let’s say you’re the boss of a company and your workplace friends are your workers or subordinates. You may have a great relationship now both professionally and personally. But if that relationship falters, it’s going to be really awkward if one of you has authority over the other. Soured relationships can spill over into the workplace and cause chaos.
These are some of the things you need to consider when trying to make workplace friends. It’s definitely more risky because it can compromise your work life if the friendships go bad. But if you do things right, you can make some great friends at work.
Alright, let’s move onto the next point…
Separate work life from personal life.
When it comes to talking to your coworkers in your off time, I would recommend changing the type of conversations you have with them. In other words, try not to talk about work with them, especially when you’re hanging outside of the workplace.
It may seem natural to talk about work stuff with your workplace friends (e.g. dealing with customers, your other coworkers) when you’re at the bar or partying with them. But I don’t recommend doing that! The whole point of having coworkers from your workplace is for them to be your friends. Bringing up work will make things more difficult for your workplace to not always associate you as a co-worker in their heads.
So you want your conversations to NOT be about work. Otherwise, you’ll still be labeled as a co-worker to them in their minds. Instead, you want to talk more about other stuff such as your hobbies, your interests and your personal life. Just like you would with your other friends. If you need a list of topic ideas to talk about with your workplace friends, click here to read my list.
You can make some great friends through coworkers.
Let’s talk about the best thing about having coworkers; they can really make for some great friends! It’s becoming more difficult to meet new people for various reasons. We are relying on technology to communicate with people remotely, and being in your 30s, you don’t have those easy opportunities such as being in college/university anymore to meet new people.
With that in mind, meeting new friends from your workplace presents a wonderful opportunity for you. Having worked in many different places throughout my work life, I’ve gotten to meet many awesome friends through work from a variety of backgrounds. Not only that, I learned so much wisdom and knowledge from these coworkers, both in the professional setting and personally as well.
I think the best way to approach friends if you’re meeting them through work is to be diplomatic. You can be a little more extreme with your “regular” friends. But with your work friends, you want to be careful with how you act because you work with them. Of course, you should always enforce your boundaries, no matter what type of friends they are. But again, you want to be cautious with workplace friends because you work in the same place where you earn income.
Conclusion
Anyways, I hope you found this post useful and informative. Again, I’m not the biggest fan of making friends through the workplace because of the risks involved with your professional life. But I acknowledge that it can be a great place to meet some wonderful friends and people. I certainly have made some great friends through work, and you certainly can as well.
If you have any questions or feedback, leave them in the comments below!
