Discussion — Social life through work versus friends outside work

Many full-time employees spend more of their waking hours with colleagues than with their families, so they understandably regard the workplace as an obvious source of friendship. Others believe it is healthier to build a social life entirely outside work. I think workplace friendships are valuable, but that it is unwise to let an employer supply one's entire social life.

Work is an efficient place to make friends because it removes the hardest part: finding time and something in common. Colleagues face the same deadlines and difficult clients, and this shared pressure creates a sense of camaraderie hard to manufacture elsewhere. For someone who has moved to a new city, the team lunch or the office five-a-side match may be the only invitation they receive for months. Such ties also benefit the work itself, since people help those they like and are slower to resign from a team they enjoy. In this sense a job really does pay a second, social salary.

Friendships outside work, however, have a quality that office ones cannot offer: they are free of competing interests. Two colleagues may be close until both apply for the same promotion, and it is difficult to complain honestly about a boss to someone who reports to the same person. Socialising only with workmates also means the conversation never leaves the office, so it becomes impossible to switch off from work. Most seriously, a social circle that is tied to a payroll disappears with redundancy or retirement, exactly when support is most needed. Friends from a sports club, a neighbourhood or university are untouched by any restructuring.

On balance, I would treat workplace friendship as a welcome bonus rather than a foundation. Good colleagues make the working day far better, but people should also invest in relationships that would survive a change of job, since those are the ones most likely to last when a career ends.