How to Make New Friends When You Work from Home

Don’t stop there – here’s where you can really connect with some new faces by planning out some office-adjacent fun. Making an effort to have fun might seem like it’s draining some of the excitement, as spontaneity can often be both refreshing and informative. It teaches you about https://remotemode.net/ which co-workers will have a margarita at lunch on a Friday and which will just stay at their desk and eat a sandwich. While these days hybrid work is heavily scheduled, it doesn’t mean that you can’t pepper a bit of excitement into your workday, even if you have to plan it out.

how to make friends when working from home

If you find that you have something in common, you can ask for their contact information and connect with them on social media. You can also join local groups or clubs that meet at coffee shops. A remote worker cannot build such communication because they lose the ability to make friends due to a lack of social interaction.

Make an effort to meet your coworkers in person when you can.

It can be difficult to make friends when you move to a new city, start a new job, or even if you’ve been working at the same company for years. With more and more people working remotely, it can be tricky to socialize and build relationships with your colleagues. Here are some tips for making friends and building relationships while working remotely. You can also attend events or meetups that are held at coffee shops. If you recently moved to a new city, coffee shops are a great place to meet people and learn about your new community. You can also make friends at work by talking to your colleagues and getting involved in big projects.

That way, you can also continue to build work relationships even when you can’t meet each other in person. It’s also beneficial to set up a centralized project management platform where you can plan and track your team’s projects and tasks. You can do this how to make friends when you work from home by building spreadsheets, creating shared folders for each project, or using project management software to automate processes. Being the architect of your own office allows you to craft a space where you’ll be happy, and therefore more productive.

Watch faces during video calls

Dee Ann Pizzica, engineering manager at Atlassian customer BRD has worked mostly remotely since 2009. She always starts her weekly staff meetings with a different icebreaker question. Even the introverts among us have a need for some type of human connection at work.

How to make friends at work

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.

how to make friends when working from home

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.