One of the best ways to make friends at work is to be proactive and start conversations with your colleagues. For example, ask them about their weekend plans, or strike up a discussion about something you how to make friends when you work from home read in the news. If you’re struggling to think of things to chat about, try joining a virtual coffee club or book club, where you can discuss topics of mutual interest with like-minded individuals.
I did B-School a few years back, and really appreciate you and your team.” We appreciate you. “In business, I’m comfortable being vulnerable online, but I realized that I’m not at all comfortable talking to people in person about what I do. I’ve recently moved to New York City, and there’s no shortage of humans.
Create your ideal office
To maintain communication, schedule regular meetings with your direct reports, whether it’s daily, weekly, or every other day. By holding these check-ins, team members will be able to address things that are hard to convey over email or chat. You’ll also be able to get more detailed updates on how your teammates are doing. A chat messaging service is your go-to medium for remote work friendships. Working from home has its advantages, but a sense of community is not one of them.
Don’t set your sights higher than a three- or four-person hangout, as that could make others in the office feel excluded, especially if you’re working on a team that rarely goes in-person. Whether you’re one of the people who’s started a new job over the pandemic or you’re just someone with a few new teammates, this is especially why making friends at work is so important. If you are athletic, then this is perhaps one of the best tips for making new friends when you work from home. Joining a sports team will help you not only meet new people, but it will allow you to work on key traits that are required in any friendship.
Be Consistent with Your Social Interaction Sessions
If you start the day with a clear idea of what you want to accomplish, it’ll help you focus on finishing one task at a time and prevent multitasking. At Atlassian, some teams even have a virtual messy-desk faceoff in Slack every week. You can learn about someone by seeing what objects they have sitting in front of them all day. At Atlassian, we https://remotemode.net/ also encourage team members to create their own Learning Circles. These are groups of employees that gather monthly to discuss a work topic they’d like to better understand. Let’s say you heard a coworker Megan mention in the all-staff meeting that she was late because she was putting her kindergarten son on the school bus for the first time.
- Making check-ins automatic also takes the guesswork out of when you’ll touch base with your coworkers next.
- When people can’t gather in person or see friends in the hall or at their desks, it’s harder to nurture meaningful connections that make work more enjoyable and tolerable.
- And could it also do something to help slow The Great Resignation?
- It also helps to move your eyes off of the screen regularly, even if it’s a micro-break of 10 to 20 seconds.