At the end of her first week of her first corporate job, Zoe Sandoval, 21, called her mom: "I am not going to be able to do this position. It's so hard. I don't understand anything. I'm just so young compared to everybody."
Things changed when she befriended Erin Vento.
The two were some of the youngest people at their law firm and soon, they became "a package deal," Sandoval tells CNBC Make It. They'd get lunch together, participate in office activities together, develop inside jokes, and routinely exchange tweets and TikToks.
"It's made work 100 times better," says Sandoval.
Work friendships are not just a benefit to employees, but also the companies they work for, according to Gallup CEO Jon Clifton. Clifton notes that work friendships reduce employee turnover, speed up communication and especially in blue-collar environments, reduce safety incidents.
"Maybe that's a brutal truth about humanity, but when people have stronger social bonds, they are more likely to keep an eye out for each other," says Clifton.
An August 2022 survey by Qualtrics of 1,000 full-time employees found that over one-third of workers say their co-workers are the second-most significant reason they stay at their company, besides feeling happy with their daily responsibilities.
But entering a new workplace social environment for the first time, especially as a young person, can leave some, like Sandoval, "extremely overwhelmed."
CNBC Make It talked to employees and experts on navigating workplace friendships. Here are their best tips:
"Slow your roll"
Friendships in the office may have to develop more gradually than friendships in other settings due to the inherent boundaries of a professional environment.
Benjamin Granger, chief workplace psychologist at Qualtrics, says, "When you join a company, everyone doesn't need to know your dirty laundry on day one, right? Slow your roll."
He has a three-week plan for any new hire trying to make workplace friends:
- Week One: Ask your hiring manager for a list of people you should meet. Aim to set up introductory one-on-ones with only your immediate team at first. Granger says that people tend to become overwhelmed when they try to make friends outside of their team too quickly.
- Week Two: Now move to coordinating calls or casual meetings with people you might end up working with, but who are not on your immediate team.
- Week Three: Continue scheduling times to catch up with others in your organization, even those who you might not have overlapping projects with. This may also be a good time to informally check in with those you met in the first couple of weeks.
Experts recommend that employees take advantage of company-sponsored events like post-work happy hours, but note that many companies need to do more work to make sure those events don't feel "forced."
In-person isn't everything
Brooke Fessenden and Kimberly Hernandez both work at Qualtrics, have a mutual love for Taylor Swift, and like to exchange photos of their dogs. They also live about 1,200 miles away from each other.
Some experts maintain that face-to-face office interactions will always be the number one way to befriend co-workers. But Fessenden, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Hernandez, based in Dallas, Texas, haven't found that to be true.
"It's just as simple as sending a Slack message," says Hernandez. "If anything, I think you could argue that there's a reason to reach out to people when you're remote."
The friendship started when Hernandez, a 2020 college graduate, reached out to Fessenden, who graduated in 2022 and had just started on the job. They scheduled time for a video call and since then, they call each other at least once a week to catch up. In March, Fessenden traveled to Dallas to visit Hernandez and see Taylor Swift in concert.
Success stories like Fessenden and Hernandez require intention. They are not able to grab drinks or hit the gym after work, spontaneously get lunch together, or quickly chat at the watercooler which Art Markman, a psychology professor at the University of Texas, Austin, says are important opportunities to make friend connections.
But as hybrid work becomes a norm, data shows that it's still possible. The August survey from Qualtrics found that 70% of employees in remote and hybrid work environments have close work friendships.
"There definitely is a little bit more of an effort than when you come in to see people in the office every day. And those are more relationships of convenience," Fessenden says. "But definitely putting in that effort to maintain a relationship with Kim has been more than worthwhile."
"Find your tribe"
Devyn Nixon, 41, a nurse practitioner based in Washington state, used to work at an office that was "incredibly diverse." After switching organizations in 2021 to be closer to home, she is now the only Black medical provider in her department.
The social experiences of the two workplaces, she says, are drastically different. At her last job, she was used to grabbing lunch with co-workers, and meeting up outside of work. Now, her days are filled with "a lot of shop talk and a lot less laughter."
As a Black woman in the medical field, Nixon is used to having patients who fixate on her race, asking her pointed questions about how she got her position or showing her pictures of their Black adopted niece. At her last job, Nixon felt like she could at least talk to her coworkers about these experiences — at her current job, not so much.
"It was just spiritually eroding and hurtful and lonely and there was just no one to talk about these things like there had been at my previous job," Nixon says. Then, she discovered her organization's Black affinity group.
"I made friends and connections. They are the reason I've stayed and haven't walked out, because I have developed friendships with other Black caregivers in the organization," she says.
Experiences like Nixon's are part of the reason Granger finds it so important for companies not only to establish but loudly broadcast their employee resource groups.
Nixon acknowledges the reality that some companies may not have enough employees of a certain identity to constitute an affinity group, but she emphasizes that young workers should find community somehow: "Find your tribe — in your workplace if you can and if not, outside of it."
Co-workers don't need to be family
Malissa Ochoa, 44, says that while climbing the corporate ladder of the finance industry, "There was no dividing work friends and real friends." But when she became a manager and had to deliver the news of layoffs, that had to change.
"I had to layoff my friends, my family. We were crying in the layoffs session," Ochoa remembers.
At the end of the day, Markman says, there is an inevitable difference between work friends and other friends because of the nature of the professional environment.
"Remember that the workplace relationship is going to have to be primary in all of it," he says. "That's the way it differs from a regular friendship where the friendship is the number one thing and everything else is secondary."
That means that while work friendships can take on a non-work level of closeness, there are also boundaries to stay aware of. For example, superiors may have to limit their circle of close friends in the office. Or younger workers may want to be mindful of who they allow to follow them on social media.
Superiors and subordinates certainly can have valuable workplace friendships, but they require extra care and attention to execute properly without crossing boundaries that could pose professional problems.
Boundaries also work to the employee's advantage. Alex Lewis, 29, works in social media, which he has found can often blur the lines between work and life. He and his co-workers have developed friendships that value the divide so that work does not bleed into the other aspects of their life. For example, they don't discuss or assign work projects outside of work hours.
"I don't think co-workers need to be viewed as your family," Lewis says. "But in the context of the work that we do together, we are able to lean on each other and ultimately care for one another in that environment."
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