Research has shown that when employees have friends at work they are better performers, more engaged, and happier with their jobs. However, thanks in large part to technology, how we relate to our coworkers is changing in two important ways. First, we are less likely to live close to our coworkers. This means that we may not have the opportunity for in-person, informal shared experiences (e.g., going to happy hours, running into each other at the “water cooler”) as well as organizationally sponsored shared experiences (company outings/dinners). Second, we increasingly rely on technology to communicate with our colleagues. Interacting through media like text message, instant message, and FaceTime makes it harder to get a sense of who someone is. We can’t assess body language and other non-linguistic cues in the same way we can in-person. When we work via technology, it is also more likely that we will only communicate with our virtual coworkers when we have a reason to — such as for a shared task. Given these fundamental differences in how we relate when working virtually, how do remote colleagues become friends?
How Remote Workers Make Work Friends
How do remote workers make friends? To investigate, the authors engaged in an 18-month study of the Midwest division of a global technology corporation, interviewing people who worked remotely at least half of the time. The authors found that remote workers often experienced virtuality as “a barrier” to forming friendships. To overcome this barrier, they had to establish what the authors term cadence. Remote workers feel like they have cadence with a coworker when they understand who that person is and can predict how they will interact with them. So how, exactly, did the people in the study develop a cadence that ultimately became a friendship? First, they began with specific assessments of whether and how they might develop a work-related cadence, asking questions such as: Does my colleague respond in an expected time frame? Do they have relevant skills that I might rely on to do my own work? Do I like working with and communicating with him/her? If the answer was “no” to any of the above, the authors noticed that people only interacted when they were required to for work-related reasons. If the answer was “yes,” the authors saw people take steps to build a richer relationship. So the first step to building friends at work is to become a more reliable work colleague.