7 Tips on How to Make Friends When You Work from Home

Engaging in casual chit chat in the minutes before or after a meeting can be enough to spark a connection that turns into a friendship. Communication in the Workplace Crossed wires and missed connections – good communication among teams is tablestakes for effective teamwork. Get best practices and sound advice on how to create understanding and work together better. It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our lives—from culture to business, science to design. The breakthroughs and innovations that we uncover lead to new ways of thinking, new connections, and new industries.

If you’d like to improve your new employee onboarding program or help employees develop a better sense of camaraderie and collaboration, we can help. Contact us to learn about our training programs for remote how to make friends when you work from home supervisors and employees. Because co-workers don’t regularly see you in the elevator or the hallway, they might forget you. Preemptively remind them of your name and role when meeting with them.

Remote Work

When hosting a team meeting via a conference line, open the line 10 minutes early and leave it open for 10 minutes after the call ends so that team members can chat if they want to. For example, she suggests setting up 30-minute coffee chats with different colleagues each week. You can also play virtual trivia with your team during lunch breaks. You can also start each meeting with a question to help people get to know each other.

You may not have a budget for small gifts, and that’s okay. Connecting with people in smaller groups can create more opportunities for one-on-one discussions. You may also want to consider starting your own group.

Say ‘thank you’ and ‘good job’

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. Powers is the only manager hired since the pandemic who oversees full-time remote workers. She has not yet met in person two of the five people she oversees. Set up a virtual coffee break, lunch break, or happy hour with them, but don’t ask for an hour, ask for minutes maximum. They’re more likely to say “yes” to a shorter commitment. You could help them imagine what it must be like in your shoes by joking about the challenges of learning about your new organization from afar.

• While I can’t feature all of their comments, you can find them by clicking here.
• You can attend real-life experiences, meet like-minded people, make more friends, have fun, and support good causes in one place.
• Some offices may have rules about your background, but if yours allows for some personalization, consider that.
• But what I am talking about is just a simple line that you can use to introduce yourself to anyone at any time.

Joining one can give you the opportunity to connect with others and make new friends. Get involved in company social events, even if they’re virtual. For example, many companies now have virtual happy hours.

Look for Co-working Spaces in Your Area.

If you’re close enough to meet in real life, you can also plan something like picking up your favorite ice cream flavors and watching a reality show while texting about it. The options are entirely dependent upon the friendship you’re choosing to forge, and there’s no one way to go about making a new friend. Slack, Zoom, and other online collaboration tools have made working from home a more social affair than ever. If you’re lucky enough to have an employer who organizes virtual parties or happy hours, make every effort to attend. Just talking about it can open up the opportunity to socialize and make a friend at the virtual office.

• Many companies have affiliate groups for people of color, women, or LGBTQ employees.
• While online networking is great, it’s also fun to meet people IRL.
• Second, your work doesn’t have to make you miserable.
• Big Orange Heart – a charity dedicated to supporting and promoting mental health and wellbeing in remote working communities – is a great place to start.
• You can even ask remote colleagues who live in your area to co-work with you.

As you catch up and reminisce about old times, you’ll be able to relive some of your fondest memories and experiences, which can be very comforting and reassuring. Plus, you’ll be able to learn about what your old friends have been up to and see how they’ve grown and changed over the years, https://remotemode.net/ which can be fascinating. Many martial arts academies have a strong sense of community, and students often form close bonds with their instructors and classmates. As you train together, you’ll have the opportunity to learn from each other and support each other’s growth and development.