How to Work With Friends

Navigating Personal Relationships in the Workplace

Whether you are meeting new people on the job, or starting a new work adventure with an old pal, it’s okay to work with your friends. In fact, maintaining friendships at work can be very rewarding to an individual's quality of life. With proper communication and boundaries, working with your friends can contribute to a healthy work-life balance.

Communication is Non-negotiable

It’s important to have healthy communication in any work environment, but it’s especially important among work friends. This is because how you treat co-workers isn’t the same way you would treat your friends, and so when you have work friends, it’s important to communicate boundaries. This may mean conversations about what you are comfortable bringing to the workplace, and what topics you would rather not have brought up at the office.

It also means understanding that people may have different personas at work. People tend to develop work identities over time. So healthy communication might involve expressing those different identities openly at the appropriate times. For example, some people may seem more detached at work simply because it helps them maintain professionalism. They might be cordial with friends at work, but be more limited in personal conversation.

Balance is Key

Ultimately, balance is the most important aspect of having work friends. With an open mind, you will be able to navigate work friendships over time and decide what you are most comfortable with. Balance also means remembering that your friends are outside of work too. Be sure to spend quality time together to help maintain a work-life balance. It’s easy to get sucked into the responsibilities of the job and forget that you know each other in your personal lives too. This especially goes for those who tend to set more strict boundaries with friends at work.

It’s also important to note that not all work friendships are the same. As you learn to build healthy boundaries, you can tailor those boundaries to the people you are comfortable with. This just means you might share more free time and conversation with different people inside and outside of work. Working with friends means lots of communication and boundary-setting, but it can be a very rewarding experience to have friends at work.