Remote Work and the Friendship Gap

Remote work was supposed to be liberation. No commute, no open-plan office noise, no mandatory fun at company happy hours. And for many people, it has been exactly that. But there's a cost that's becoming harder to ignore: the slow erosion of workplace friendship.

A 2024 Gallup study found that employees who work exclusively from home are significantly less likely to have a best friend at work — and having a best friend at work is one of the strongest predictors of job satisfaction, engagement, and retention.

The Water Cooler Was Doing More Than We Thought

Those casual, unplanned interactions — bumping into someone in the kitchen, chatting before a meeting starts, walking to lunch together — were doing important social work. They created the 'weak ties' that sociologist Mark Granovetter identified as crucial for both career advancement and social wellbeing.

Filling the Gap

Remote workers need to be intentional about replacing the social interactions that offices provided automatically. Coworking spaces help. So do regular in-person meetups. And increasingly, platforms like Pulse are becoming the social infrastructure that remote workers use to build friendships outside the workplace.

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