From Colleagues to Connection: Why Work Friendships Matter

Workplace friendship is easy to dismiss as a nice-to-have: good for morale, helpful when it happens, but not something leaders need to actively consider.

However, that view is increasingly out of step with how we experience work today.

KPMG’s 2025 Friends at Work research found that 45% of employees surveyed feel isolated and alone at work at least sometimes¹. A figure that’s nearly double the figure from the previous year.

At the same time, many of us are placing greater value on having friends at work. In the same research, 57% of respondents said they would choose a role paying 10% below market if it came with close work friendships, over a role paying 10% above market without them.

The sentiment I hear from many people I work with is that we are more connected than ever, yet feeling lonelier than ever.

KPMG’s researchers describe this as the “friendship mirage”: connection on the surface, but loneliness underneath.

This matters, and not because people should be forced to make friends at work. They shouldn’t. Friendship is voluntary, personal and not something anyone (let alone a leader) can mandate.

It is about recognising the role genuine human connection plays in trust, feedback, resilience and performance, and making space for it in how your team works.

The Team That Taught Me Something Important

Early in my career, I worked in a big, complex organisation.

The work was genuinely demanding. There were difficult stakeholder dynamics, heavy workloads and constant pressure to deliver. My manager was stretched across many competing priorities and wasn’t consistently available.

What got me (and the rest of the team) through wasn’t a wellness program or a cultural initiative from our manager, HR or the organisation, but the people we worked with.

Somewhere in the middle of the pressure, the long days and the shared frustrations, we became genuine friends. We challenged each other’s thinking. We covered for each other in difficult moments. We laughed when things were hard. We found ways to make the difficult stretches bearable and the wins worth celebrating.

The work mattered, but it was the quality of the connections that carried us and helped us deliver great outcomes.

Connection Changes How We Interpret Each Other

Much of how we respond to other people at work is shaped by fast social judgements.

Is this person safe? Are they on my side? Can I trust their intent? Do I need to protect myself, or can I be open?

Those judgements shape what happens next.

When you trust someone, you interpret their behaviour more generously. You’re more likely to assume positive intent, hear their feedback as useful rather than threatening and challenge them when necessary because the relationship has enough strength to hold the tension.

When you don’t trust someone, the same words can land very differently. A question can sound like criticism. Feedback can feel like an attack. A delay can be read as disrespect. A different view can be interpreted as resistance.

Same words, but a different relationship and consequently, a completely different feeling, interpretation and impact.

Friendship, or at least a genuine connection, changes the quality of communication inside a team.

Most teams don’t struggle to work together because they lack access to information. They struggle because messages are softened, avoided, delayed, filtered, misinterpreted or mismanaged.

When there is trust, people can challenge ideas without questioning the person’s intent. They can say the hard thing because the relationship is not so fragile that candour will break it.

And that’s why friendship can become the informal engine of a genuinely healthy feedback culture in your team. Not because friends are always nice to each other, but because genuine friends are often willing to be more honest with each other.

You Can't Mandate Joy At Work, But You Can Create The Conditions For It →

The Business Case is Hard to Ignore

Gallup has long argued that having a best friend at work matters. As part of its employee engagement framework, Gallup asks employees whether they have a best friend at work, and its research has found that people who strongly agree with that statement are seven times as engaged².

KPMG’s 2024 Friends at Work survey points in a similar direction³. Among the 1,000 full-time professional employees surveyed, most said work friendships helped them feel more engaged at work (83%), more satisfied in their jobs (81%) and more connected to their workplaces (80%).

The mental health connection is also significant. KPMG found that 78% of full-time professionals believe work friendships support their mental health at work. Nearly half said work friends provide a sounding board and source of empathy during stressful or challenging situations. Others pointed to resilience, a sense of belonging and reduced burnout.

None of this should surprise us.

Work is not just a set of tasks. It is a social system. People make decisions, solve problems, navigate conflict, absorb pressure and adapt to change in relationships with others.

When those relationships are thin, transactional or guarded, the work becomes harder. People spend energy managing perception, second-guessing intent and protecting themselves.

When relationships are stronger, the work can move more freely. People ask for help earlier. They speak more openly, recover more quickly and are more willing to go the extra mile, not because a leader has demanded it, but because they care about the people affected by the outcome.

Friendship Is Not Favouritism

There is also a shadow side to consider. Workplace friendships can strengthen trust, collaboration and wellbeing, but if leaders aren’t careful, they can also create cliques, exclusion, favouritism and blurred boundaries.

So, you want to be thoughtful.

A friendship-enabling culture is not one where some people become part of the inner circle while others are left outside it. It is not a culture where decisions are made through social proximity rather than merit. It is not a culture where people feel they need to join after-work drinks, share personal details or become more extroverted to belong.

Connection should never become a hidden test of loyalty. This means that the goal is not forced intimacy, performative friendliness or expecting everyone to be close friends.

The goal is to create a working environment in which trust, care and genuine human regard are more likely to grow.

Why it’s Getting Harder

None of this is getting easier.

Digital tools can help people stay in contact and collaborate across distances and time zones. But staying in contact is not the same as staying close. Consider:

• A quick message is useful, but it is not the same as a real conversation.
• A team channel creates visibility, but it does not automatically create belonging.
• A virtual meeting connects calendars, but it does not necessarily connect people.

Additionally, the shift to hybrid and remote work has changed the conditions under which workplace friendships naturally form.

The quick conversation before a meeting starts. The lunch that turns into a real exchange. The walk back from the cafe in the office building, where someone finally says what they actually think. The small moments where team members and colleagues notice each other as people, not just roles on a screen.

These small and often incidental moments are the raw ingredients of trust. When those moments disappear, relationship-building becomes more deliberate. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean you’ll need to pay more attention.

Your Leadership Question

The question is not whether everyone in your team has a best friend at work. That is too narrow, and for some people, too personal.

The better question is whether people have relationships strong enough to support the work when it gets hard.

Can they challenge each other’s thinking without it becoming personal? Can they ask for help before they are overwhelmed? Can they disagree and still stay connected? Can they notice when someone is struggling, celebrate when someone succeeds, and rely on each other when pressure rises?

Because pressure will rise. Every team reaches moments of uncertainty, disagreement, fatigue and stress. In those moments, systems, processes and leadership all matter. But so do the relationships between people.

What Leaders Can Do

So what can you do?

While workplace friendship can’t be mandated, you can shape the conditions in which trust and connection are more likely to form. Here are five places to start.

Tip One: Protect informal time
Not every interaction needs to serve a deliverable.

If every meeting is packed, every conversation is transactional, and every shared moment is rushed, don’t be surprised when relationships stay thin.

Build space into the working rhythm where people can connect without an agenda. Start meetings with a few minutes of genuine conversation. Protect lunch breaks when people are together. Create breathing room after major milestones. Allow time for people to talk about the work and how the work feels.

Tip Two: Model genuine interest
People watch what leaders value. If you ask only about deadlines, risks, and outputs, your team members learn that performance is the only currency that matters.

Of course, the work matters. But your team members are humans with context, pressure, hopes, concerns and lives beyond the task list.

Leaders who know their team members beyond their outputs send a signal: people matter here…you matter. That does not mean prying or forcing personal disclosure. It means asking real questions, listening properly and remembering the answers.

Curiosity is contagious. If you want a team capable of genuine connection, start by being genuinely interested in the people you lead.

Tip Three: Design in-person time with intention
When people come together physically, make it count.

Too often, organisations bring people into the office and then fill the day with presentations, updates, and information-sharing that could have been done online. That’s a missed opportunity.

Use in-person time for the conversations that build trust, not just the updates that could have been sent by email. Create space for discussion, reflection, problem-solving and shared experience. Let people work through the messy issues together. Give them time to talk informally, not as an afterthought squeezed between agenda items, but as part of the design.

Tip Four: Watch for exclusion
Connection doesn’t develop evenly.

Some people build relationships quickly. Others take longer. Some are naturally pulled into informal conversations, while others remain on the edge. Some roles have more access to the networks where information, context and opportunity flow.

Leaders need to notice those patterns. Who gets included early? Who hears information first? Who is invited into informal problem-solving? Who has someone to debrief with after a difficult meeting? And who is left to figure things out alone?

This matters because while friendship at work is social, it also shapes confidence, influence, access and opportunity. You want all your team members to feel seen, included and able to access support.

Tip Five: Treat connection as a talent strategy
If organisations are serious about attracting and retaining talent, they need to be serious about the relational conditions people experience every day.

This is not about adding another social event to the calendar. It is about designing work in a way that gives people the time, permission and opportunity to build real relationships.

From Colleagues to Connection

Workplace friendships are not a distraction from work; they are a crucial ingredient in making work happen. So, here’s the question to sit with this week: In your team, are people simply working alongside each other, or are they connected enough to help each other do the work well?

Republished with courtesy from michellegibbings.com.