Office friendships are atrophying amid remote work.
But you can reap tangible benefits by putting in the effort to keep up intimacy with your office mates.

There was a time, in the not-so-distant past, when going out to lunch, day after day, with the same group of colleagues was as mundane a part of daily life as the morning meeting or evening commute. But after six months of eating sad desk salads alone, the idea of lunch with our work clique has never felt so exciting.
As we’ve been working from our kitchen tables, many of our relationships with colleagues have been atrophying.
It’s a phenomenon that has positives: the break-up of work cliques means the formerly left-out may have more opportunities to join the ‘in-crowd’ – or maybe there’s no longer an in-crowd at all. But there are drawbacks to drifting away from your work buddies, too. Experts suggest that, while our work-based friendships are generally our most delicate ones, they’re also some of the most impactful on our overall happiness.
Remote work has changed the dynamic of our work relationships. We can – and, in many cases, should – be trying to keep those friendships going, or even spark new ones.slotxo But as our offices operate online, that’s easier said than done.

‘Friendships of convenience’

“Work is the number one place where people make friends,” says Shasta Nelson, author of The Business of Friendship: Making the Most of Our Relationships Where We Spend Most of Our Time. “It’s also the place where most friendships end, because people change jobs.”